Card selecting and address printing apparatus

A card selecting and address printing apparatus for selecting a card having specified information from among a group of cards bearing thereon coded information and for transfer-printing said specified information from said card onto a sheet of paper comprising:

• a card hopper to receive therein a group of cards including the cards to be selected and those not to be selected;
• a card feeder for feeding the cards, from the card hopper, one at a time at a predetermined time interval;
• an optical card reading and signal generating means, stored with specified information, which reads the coded information on a card fed by the card feeder, compares it with the stored specified information, and generates a first signal accordingly which will render said card either a selected or a non-selected card depending upon whether or not said card has information thereon which corresponds to the specified information of said optical means and which generates a second signal for actuating said card feeder at a shorter time interval than said predetermined time interval for feeding a subsequent card when said read card is a non-selected card, to ensure rapid feeding of the cards in such cases;
• a card path selecting mechanism which selects a card path according to said first signal generated at the optical card reading and signal generating means so as to transport said selected card along a printing path or said non-selecting card along a non-printing path, respectively;
• a workpiece hopper accommodating therein papers on which said specified information is to be transfer-printed;
• a workpiece feeder for feeding said papers one at a time successively along a paper feeding path from the workpiece hopper to a waiting station provided adjacent to a printing station of the paper and for subsequently feeding the paper to the printing station in response to the third signal generated from the optical card reading and signal generating means when said read card is a selected card while simultaneously feeding the next paper to the waiting station;
• said workpiece feeder including first and second paper feeding rollers along said paper feeding path, the first roller being mounted under the work piece hopper, the second roller being disposed at a distance from the first roller which is less than or equal to the length of said paper, and the circumferential velocity of the second roller being higher than that of the first roller, so as to maintain an appropriate distance between the papers fed along the paper feeding path;
• a paper position sensing and timing device for generating a fourth signal for stopping said workpiece feeder in order to stop the workpiece at said waiting station at a preselected constant time interval after said paper is sensed by said paper position sensing and timing device;
• printing means disposed at said printing station which pressedly transfer-prints said specified information on the selected card fed through the card path selecting mechanism and the printing path onto the paper fed from the workpiece feeder along said paper feeding path;
• a card stacker;
• and
• a card stacking roller which catches the cards fed through the printing path and through said non-printing path and stacks them in the card stacker in the same order as they were held in the card hopper.