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US 4,057,243 AGranted
Sheet feed termination detector
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorSakae Fujimoto
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A sheet feed apparatus feeds sheets, placed on a sheet receptacle, one by one toward a sheet processor. When the sheets on the receptacle are exhausted, the operation of the apparatus is interrupted by a signal from a signal emitter which operates to detect the termination of sheet delivery. The signal emitter is actuated upon the detection of the occurrence of a plurality of idling operations of the sheet feed apparatus.
Claims7
In apparatus for feeding successive sheets, in combination,
- a. a sheet receptacle for supporting a stack of sheets to be fed;
- b. means, including a cyclically operable sheet-feeding element engageable with the uppermost sheet of a stack on the receptacle, for successively feeding sheets therefrom;
- c. a detecting member for detecting the termination of sheet delivery, said detecting member being movable, by an idling sheet-feeding operation of the feeding element when the sheets on the sheet receptacle have been exhausted, through a range of positions including a predetermined position;
- d. means for producing a signal indicative of the detection of the termination of sheet delivery in response to movement of said detecting member to said predetermined position;
- and
- e. means for controlling movement of said detecting member in response to idling operation of the feeding element such that said detecting member reaches said predetermined position upon completion of a predetermined plural number of idling sheet-feeding operations of said feeding element.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.