Document handling apparatus
AssigneeDe La Rue International Limited
InventorsJohn A. Skinner, Simon G. Calverley, David A. Brooks
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A document handling apparatus is disclosed which is particularly well adapted for counting documents of value, such as banknotes. The document handling apparatus comprises an input module for receiving a stack of documents and feeding them one by one into the apparatus, a detector box which houses a series of detectors for detecting characteristics of the documents, a transport system for conveying documents within the apparatus, a doubles detector for sensing the passage of each document therethrough and a stacker module for stacking the output documents and presenting them to the user. The apparatus is based on a metal framework in a plastics housing.
Claims15
A document sensing assembly for detecting the passage of documents therethrough, the document sensing assembly comprising:
- a rotatably-mounted shaft, the shaft carrying at least one roller assembly mounted on the shaft;
- a guide surface, the at least one roller assembly cooperating with the guide surface to define a nip therebetween;
- sensing means for sensing deflection of the at least one roller assembly relative to the guide surface in response to a passage of one or more documents through the nip between the roller assembly and the guide surface;
- monitoring means for monitoring sensed deflections;
- and
- a keying block adjacent to one end of the shaft and fixed to the shaft, the keying block being shaped to permit a passage of the keying block through a correspondingly-shaped aperture when the shaft is in a first predetermined orientation, and to prevent the passage of the keying block therethrough when the shaft is not in the first predetermined orientation;
- wherein at least a portion of the shaft is configured to rotate eccentrically, so that rotation of the shaft moves the at least one roller assembly towards or away from the guide surface such that the size of the nip defined between the at least one roller assembly and the guide surface can be adjusted by the rotation of the shaft.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.