Manual Feed Tray Air Blowing Retry for Sheet Separation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing sheet feeding apparatuses face issues with feeding errors due to adhesive forces between sheets, particularly in manual feed trays, which can occur despite air separation mechanisms, leading to inefficiencies and user inconvenience.
Innovation Solution
A control unit executes a retry operation and a first blowing mode to re-attempt sheet feeding after a predetermined time without detection, and performs air blowing operations before retrying to reduce adhesive forces between sheets.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If air is not blown onto the feed tray after the initial blowing to prevent excessive sheet separation, then sheet separation is maintained, but feeding errors occur due to adhesive forces between sheets
Solution Approach 1:
The air blowing operation is performed preliminarily before the feeding operation to separate sheets and reduce adhesive forces. This preliminary separation action prevents feeding errors by ensuring sheets are properly separated before the feeding mechanism attempts to pick and transport them, directly addressing the contradiction between maintaining separation and preventing adhesive-related feeding errors
2Reliability
If the air blowing operation is executed continuously to prevent adhesive forces, then sheet separation is improved, but energy consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The air blowing operation is executed periodically at specific timing points (before feeding operations and upon detection of feeding errors) rather than continuously. This periodic action maintains effective sheet separation when needed while minimizing energy consumption during periods when sheets are already properly separated or feeding is successful, resolving the contradiction between separation effectiveness and energy usage
3Reliability
If a retry operation is implemented to re-execute feeding after failure, then feeding reliability improves, but the time required for feeding operations increases
Solution Approach 1:
The detection unit provides feedback to the control unit about whether feeding was successful. When feeding failure is detected, the control unit executes a retry operation after performing air blowing to separate sheets. This feedback mechanism ensures feeding reliability by attempting to correct failures while the air blowing operation in between retry attempts helps prevent repeated adhesive-related failures, balancing time consumption with improved success rate
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach effectively reduces feeding errors by separating sheets and improves usability by minimizing the need for manual intervention when feeding errors occur.
Implementation Method 1
an air blowing unit configured to blow air to the sheet supported on the tray
Data Source
AI summary
A sheet feeding apparatus includes a tray disposed at a side part of an apparatus body and supporting a sheet, a feed unit feeding the sheet supported on the tray, a detection unit detecting that the sheet has been fed by the feed unit, an air blowing unit blowing air to the sheet supported on the tray, and a control unit executing a feeding operation to feed the sheet by the feed unit and a blowing operation to blow the air by the air blowing unit, respectively. The control unit is configured to execute a retry operation to re-execute the feeding operation in a case where the detection unit does not detect feeding of the sheet within a predetermined time after executing the feeding operation, and execute a first blowing mode to execute the blowing operation after executing the feeding operation and before executing the retry operation.