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AssigneeBrown Printing Company, A Division of Gruner & Jahr Printing and Publishing Co.
InventorsDonald R. Gleason, Michael A. Barenklau
Estimating the term…
A conventional pocket for delivering signatures in a bindery line is modified by providing a lift plate which is hinged to the leading edge of the pocket's signature support tray. A suitable actuator under control of the system's computer is made to raise and lower that lift plate, depending upon the number of machine cycles which will be executed before that particular pocket will be called upon to deliver a signature to the magazine being assembled. If more than a predetermined number of machine cycles will take place before a signature must be delivered, the actuator lifts the lift plate and, in doing so, elevates the leading edge of the signature stack to the point where the lowermost signature is positioned out of contact with the hopper's separator disc. This prevents unwanted abrasion and marring of signatures.
In a hopper mechanism for use in a demographic book bindery line including a book conveyor, said hopper being of the type including a signature support tray for holding a plurality of signatures in a stacked relation thereon, a rotatable drum having gripping means on the periphery thereof, said drum being disposed beneath said signature support tray and journaled for rotation about a generally horizontal axis, a separator disc disposed proximate one end of said support tray and journaled for rotation about a generally vertical axis, said separator disc having a radial opening formed through its thickness dimension, and a cam actuated vacuum sucker synchronized to the rotation of said drum and said separator disc for periodically extending through said radial opening in said separator disc for grasping and deflecting the leading edge of the bottommost signature in the stack to allow said leading edge to be engaged by said gripping means on said rotating drum, the improvement comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.