Sheet buffering means and method for buffering sheets

Abstract

The invention concerns sheet buffering means for placement between paper handling equipment, such as a printer or a paper picker, and paper finishing equipment, for example, equipment for stapling and / or folding, which comprises at least a set of a front pair of rollers with rotating rollers for feeding of a sheet between the rollers and a rear pair of rollers with rotating rollers for feeding of a sheet between the rollers. At least one roller in each pair is driven by a common motor or a motor each, the front driven roller is disengageable by means of a clutch for holding a lead end of a sheet at the same time as the rear driven roller is driven so that the sheet becomes bent between the two pairs of rollers. The rear pair of rollers is stopped when the trail end of the sheet reaches the rear pair of rollers, whereby the sheet may sustain bent until it is desirable to feed it out, which is achieved by starting both of the pairs of rollers. The invention also concerns a method of buffering sheets.

Description

[0001] The present invention concerns sheet buffering means for placement between paper handling equipment, such as a printer, offset press, copying machine or paper collator, and paper finishing equipment, such as for stapling and / or folding and a method for buffering sheets. BACKGROUND ART [0002] Copying machines and printers become more and more productive and the number of sheets fed out per period of time increase. A characteristic that also has become common is that the sheets are fed out in showers of, for example, two to eight sheets with a pause in between. For example, three sheets are fed out closely after each other thereafter a pause occurs and thereafter three sheets in close series. [0003] It is common that the paper finishing equipment is mounted after the paper handling equipment, such as the printer or paper collator, in the form of equipment for compiling, stapling, folding, foldprocessing, such as square back folding, book production or mailinserting. The paper f...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention is a solution for buffering sheets of paper in a more efficient and compact way. By using a sheet buffering means, the process chain can be made shorter and the number of paper paths can be significantly reduced. This results in a simpler, less expensive, more compact, and easier to handle system."

Problems solved by technology

This requires very quick equipment which therefore are expensive to manufacture, buy and service due to the requirement of speed.

This system solves the time problem but shows some disadvantages, for example, it is a problem that printers / copying machines and / or other paper handling equipment are mounted length wise together with subsequent paper finishing equipment in several steps.

The equipment of today form very long chains which become difficult to place.

In special cases the customer may not physically be able to fit another part of equipment into their process chain.

Another problem is the need of long paper paths.

Complicated paper paths are expensive to manufacture and have in paper machines.

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