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US 5,707,056 AGranted
Variable ratio feedhead plenum
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorsDavid F. Rauen, Mark Stevens
Life of this patent
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AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorsDavid F. Rauen, Mark Stevens
Estimating the term…
A vacuum corrugation feeder used to feed a wide variety of sheet sizes and stocks includes a variable ratio feedhead plenum. Included within vacuum plenum is an adjustable shutter apparatus that includes a foam roller mounted for rotation on shaft. A shutter member in the form of a plastic sheet is connected to the foam roller and can be wrapped and unwrapped around the foam roller by rotation of knob that is connected to the shaft depending on whether the vacuum pressure is to be high or low. The foam roller is mounted above a plenum plate of the vacuum plenum such that rotation of the knob in a clockwise direction causes the shutter to unwrap from the foam roller and partially cover vacuum holes in the plenum plate and thereby decrease the amount of negative pressure from the vacuum plenum that reaches sheets being fed. Manipulation of the knob in a counterclockwise direction removes the shutter from covering the holes in the plenum plate and thereby increasing the negative pressure to the sheet while simultaneously wrapping the shutter around the foam roller.
A sheet feeding apparatus for efficiently feeding a wide variety of sheet sizes and stocks, comprising:
In a top sheet feeding apparatus having a sheet stack support tray, feedhead means for feeding sheets from the sheet stack support tray in a predetermined direction and including a vacuum plenum positioned over the front of a stack of sheets when sheets are placed in the tray with the vacuum plenum having a negative pressure applied thereto, the a vacuum plenum having holes therein positioned orthogonally with respect to said predetermined direction of sheet feeding and through which negative pressure is applied to draw a sheet thereto from the sheet stack, an improvement for enabling the sheet feeder to feed a wide variety of sheet sizes and stocks, comprising:
A printing apparatus for printing page image information onto copy sheets, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.