Method and apparatus for processing envelopes containing documents to obtain images of the documents

A document processing apparatus, comprising of:

• an envelope feeder having an input for receiving a stack of envelopes containing contents, wherein the envelope feeder is operable to serially feed envelopes from the stack;
• an opening station operable to receive envelopes from the envelope feeder and open the envelopes along one or more edges;
• an extraction station for receiving the envelopes from the opening station and pulling apart the faces of the envelope to present the contents to an operator so that the operator can manually remove the contents from an envelope;
• a document input bin positioned adjacent the extraction station, wherein the input bin comprises a forward vertical wall and a rearward vertical wall spaced apart from the forward wall, forming an enlarged feed slot for receiving extracted contents in a generally vertical orientation;
• a generally horizontal feed conveyor at least part of which is positioned between the forward wall and the rearward vertical wall of the input bin, wherein the feed conveyor is configured to receive the extracted envelope contents in an on edge orientation, such that the bottom edge of the contents contacts the feed conveyor;
• an element for urging the contents in the document input bin downwardly toward the feed conveyor wherein one of the forward wall and the rearward wall of the document input comprises a vertically elongated opening and the element for urging the contents downwardly projects through the vertically elongated opening;
• a document feeder for receiving contents from the feed belt and separating the contents into a serial stream of documents;
• and
• an imaging station for receiving documents from the document feeder and scanning the documents to obtain image data for the documents.