Sheet media realignment mechanism
US5316285A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Apr 30, 1993 |
| Grant date | May 31, 1994 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Apr 30, 2013 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
- CPC primaryY10S271/902
- WIPO fieldHandling
- WIPO sectorMechanical engineering
Abstract
A sheet media realignment mechanism is described for use in, for example, a printer. Preferably, the mechanism includes a lever located in the sheet-feeding path adjacent and beneath a rotatable member that mounts a plurality of sheet-feeding rollers. At the beginning of a sheet-feeding cycle, the lever is urged from its extreme upstream pivotal orientation by a pivot-mounted strut into a downstream orientation in which a top sheet of the printer's infeed stack is fed by frictional forces into the feed zone. Upon release of the lever by the strut at a predefined pivotal orientation of the rotatable member, the lever is urged farther into an extreme downstream orientation by the sheet being advanced. After the sheet passes by, the lever is returned to its extreme upstream orientation in which it urges upstream and away from the printer's feed zone any sheets of the stack that inadvertently may have been dislodged and partly advanced downstream and toward the feed zone by frictional forces between the fed sheet and those beneath it. Thus, the lever realigns the sheets of the paper stack after each single-sheet feed into the printer or other sheet media-processing equipment to permit …
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.