Object feeding system

Abstract

The present invention provides an object-feeding system. The feeding system includes an object feeder and a pickup roller. The object feeder includes an object separating ramp and a tray part. The object separating ramp is placed along an object feeding direction. The tray part is for loading at least an object to be fed, and the tray part includes a main body and a protruding portion sticking out from the main body and connected to the object separating ramp, wherein the protruding portion and the main body constitute a hollow part. The pickup roller is for feeding the object by rolling, wherein the hollow and the pickup roller separately locate two sides of the object and the pickup roller locates the hollow place above.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention relates to an object feeder, and particularly relates to an object feeder with a tray part having a function for automatically adjusting the angle of paper feeding.[0003]2. Description of the Prior Art[0004]Paper feeders are widely used in various kinds of office machines such as copy machines, printers or fax machines. Their function is to transmit the papers one by one to a processing device such as a print module to ensure continuing procession.[0005]Please refer to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a prior art paper feeder 100. The paper feeder 100 includes a paper object separating ramp 110 and a tray part 120. Normally, the paper feeder 100 is designed so that the pickup roller 130 only catches one paper at a time. Normal force N occurs while the pickup roller 130 contacts the papers, and the possibility of also catching the next paper is increased, i.e. multi-feeding can occ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]The present invention provides an object feeding system for providing a buffering space between the pickup roller and the hollow part while the pickup roller picks up papers to decrease a necessary normal force when the stacking height of papers is low (that is, the ratio between the normal force N and the paper catching force P). Also, the paper entering angle between the paper and ramp can be compensated according to the normal force to solve the above-mentioned problem by achieving the effect of buckling paper separating.

Problems solved by technology

On the other hand, misfeeding may occur if the normal force N is too small.

Thus, the paper feeder design becomes more complex.

(1) As shown in FIG. 1, the paper separating ramp is designed to have flexibility and the paper separating face can compensate the paper entering angle corresponding to the paper weight. The paper with a larger weight will press the ramp (to the left) to generate a larger paper entering angle to decrease the resistant force. In practice, if a user places papers by utilizing too large a force, the ramp may be pressed, affecting the initial entering angle due to the force from the user even when light-weighted papers are utilized, thus the compensating function may be useless.

(2) U.S. Pat. No. 6,880,821 discloses an apparatus for compensating resistant force for papers of different weight by controlling the location of the paper separating ramp 110. Therefore, for papers with larger weight, the paper separating ramp 110 is located far from a paper pickup device, and for papers with smaller weight, the paper separating ramp 110 is located near the paper pickup device. Such a kind of apparatus is too complicated, however, and the user must determine the weight of papers and control the location of the paper separating ramp 110 manually if the compensation mechanism is desired to be applied.

(3) U.S. Pat. No. 5,895,040 discloses an apparatus with a paper separating ramp 110 having a buckling device with a comparatively large frictional coefficient value such that a paper can be separated from another paper due to buckling force during pick-up. Also, the buckling device has flexibility such that the paper head of papers of large weight push the buckling device flexibly. Afterwards, the paper separating operation is performed by the ramp with a comparatively low frictional coefficient, thereby the mis-feed or jam due to insufficient twist force provided by the self-compensation structure can be avoided.

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