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US 5,508,818 AGranted
Mixed mail transport
AssigneeScan-Code, Inc.
InventorJohn C. Hamma
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for transporting mixed documents having a loading conveyor for transporting documents to a document prefeeder. The document prefeeder transports documents from the loading conveyor on an angled conveyor to a stack feeder that accumulates a shallow stack of documents. A single document feed removes single documents from a shallow stack on the stack feeder and transports the single documents to a main conveyor. A camera on the main conveyor reads each document such as mail, and prints information concerning the document, such as a bar code, on each document. The documents are moved by the main conveyor to an output conveyor for sorting and accumulation.
Claims19
A document transport system comprising:
- loading means, said loading means comprising an intermittently operated input conveyor means, said input conveyor means defining a substantially horizontal transport path for unsorted documents deposited thereon;
- second conveyor means located downstream of said input conveyor means whereby said second conveyor means receives documents travelling on said input conveyor means, said second conveyor means arranging documents received thereon in overlapping fashion;
- third conveyor means located adjacent to and downstream of said second conveyor means, said third conveyor means receiving and accumulating documents from said second conveyor means whereby a shallow stack of documents will be formed on said third conveyor means having a discharge end and moving said shallow stack of documents toward said discharge end;
- means located immediately downstream of said discharge end of said third conveyor means for extracting single documents from said shallow stack of documents;
- means for transporting single documents extracted from said shallow stack along a transport path, said transport path having input and discharge ends;
- and
- means located at the discharge end of said transport path for receiving and storing the documents.
4 more elements
A document transport system comprising:
- loading means, said loading means comprising an intermittently operated input conveyor means, said input conveyor means defining a substantially horizontal transport path for unsorted documents deposited thereon;
- prefeed means, said prefeed means located downstream of said input conveyor means, for receiving documents traveling on said input conveyor means, and said prefeed means comprising an intermittently driven angled conveyor means for lifting documents from said loading means;
- feedstack means located adjacent to and downstream of said prefeed means for the accumulation of a shallow stack of documents whereby the shallow stack of documents will be formed on said feed stack means and moved toward a discharge end;
- single document feed means for extracting single documents from said feed stack means;
- main conveyor means for receiving documents from said single document feed means and transporting documents from an input end to a discharge end, said main conveyor means further comprising a reader means for reading information from documents;
- and
- output means for receiving documents from said main conveyor means and ordering documents into at least one group.
4 more elements
A document transport system comprising:
- loading means for defining a substantially horizontal transport path for unsorted documents comprising an intermittently driven input conveyor;
- prefeed means for receiving documents travelling on said loading means comprising an intermittently driven angled conveyor means for lifting documents from said loading means, said prefeed means located downstream from said loading means;
- first sensor means for sensing documents and controlling the input conveyor of the loading means in response to the position of documents;
- feed stack means located adjacent to and downstream from said prefeeding means for the accumulation of a shallow stack of documents whereby a shallow stack of documents is formed on said feed stack means and moved toward a discharge end;
- second sensor means for sensing documents and controlling the angled conveyor of the prefeed means in response to the position of documents;
- single document feed means for extracting single documents from said feed stack means, said single document feed means comprising intermittently driven rollers;
- main conveyor means for receiving documents from said feed stack means and transporting documents from an input end to a discharge end;
- third sensor means for sensing documents and controlling a roller of the single document feed means in response to the position of documents;
- and
- output means for receiving documents from said main conveyor means and accumulating said documents in at least one group.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.