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US 4,807,866 AGranted
Sheet stackers
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorDenis J. Stemmle
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A device for stacking sheets, as from the outlet of a reprographic machine, uses a pair of belts having coplanar upper surfaces. The upper runs of the belts are stationary, and have a gap between them. To make the device work, the gap is displaced to one side of this stack and a sheet is fed into contact with that part of one belt which comes to lie below the stack, so that as the gap is translated across the bottom of the stack, the sheet is applied smoothly to the stack, displacing it upwardly.
Claims8
A sheet stacker which effectively stacks a wide variety of sheets including lightweight flimsy sheets, comprising:
- a pair of support belts with horizontal, coplanar, opposing upper runs, the belts each being anchored at one end and wound on a supply drum on the other end and entrained over a respective roller, said rollers translatable as a unit while being free to rotate, and which define between them an unobstructed feed gap for sheets to be applied seriatim to the bottom face of a stack of sheets resting on one or both belts;
- means for feeding sheets singly through the gap and into contact, within said gap with a registration edge and for holding the sheet in contact therewith as the rollers are translated, and wherein the forward end of the stack with respect to the direction in which the stack is translated becomes aligned with the registration edge as one belt is successively pulled away from the said bottom face and is replaced after an interval by the other belt having the fresh sheet on its upper face, thus successively pressing the fresh sheet against the bottom face of the stack to displace it upwardly by one sheet thickness.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.