JP2003205254A - Document shredding and compressing apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To form a shredded block always having a constant volume irrespective of a nature of charged shredded waste. <P>SOLUTION: The compressing apparatus compresses the shredded waste of paper into the shape of a block. A transport mechanism transports the shredded waste from a hopper to a blocking part. The blocking part consists of a filling part to be filled up with the shredded waste from the transport mechanism, and a compression piston moving up and down in the filling part. The compression piston has: a pressure sensor for detecting compression pressure to return in the direction of an original position; and a block height detecting mechanism which detects a relative position of the compression piston to the filling part, and detects the compression height of a block during actuation of the pressure sensor. The block height detecting mechanism consists of a slit plate which has a plurality of comb teeth-shaped slits, and a slit sensor which counts the number of the slits, and the slit plate moves up and down with the vertical movement of the compression piston. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a compressor for shredding paper such as documents and then compressing the shredded scraps into blocks so that post-processing can be performed without increasing bulk. Related to the improvement of.

[0002]

A shredder for shredding paper on which unnecessary documents are written is widely known at present. By the way, the conventional paper shredder is shredded with a rotary blade to shred the paper into strips, or once shredded into strips, further shredded in the lateral direction to obtain finer shreds. There is a configuration to refuse. However, since the shredded material is very bulky, for example, strip-shaped shredded material, the volume ratio for disposal is poor. On the other hand, a piece that is finely cut in the lateral direction is disjointed, and scraps rise or diffuse when discarded, which is a problem.

Therefore, a means for compressing the document waste, which has been shredded in this way, into a standard shape and forming it into blocks can be considered. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-279836 discloses a technique in which unnecessary paper or the like is shredded and then compressed to be stored compactly.

In the above-mentioned conventional technique, the shredded chips are conveyed into the compression cylinder, and the shredded chips are compressed into blocks in this cylinder. The shredded chips are conveyed into the compression cylinder by the spiral conveyor. However, a compression motor is used to compress this. A torque fluctuation detector is attached to the compression motor, and the compression is stopped when the compression torque amount reaches a predetermined value. In other words,
In the prior art, the amount of compression is determined by measuring the strength of compression. However, when cutting documents, not only a large amount of paper with the same properties is shredded, but also paper with different properties and thicknesses is often inserted sequentially. Therefore, the size of the block, that is, the compression height of the block is not constant depending on the property of the thrown shredded chips. In that case, the size of the block is not constant when the block-shaped shredded waste is conveyed to the post-treatment process, which may cause a problem in automation.

The present invention is intended to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems, regardless of the properties of the shredded chips that are thrown in.
It is an object of the present invention to disclose a configuration capable of forming a shredded block having a constant volume at all times.

[0006]

In a compressor for compressing shredded waste such as paper according to the present invention into a block shape, in order to achieve the above object, shredded waste is conveyed from a hopper to a blocking section by a conveying mechanism. It was decided to compress this into blocks.
The blocking unit is composed of a filling unit that fills the shredded waste from the transport mechanism and a compression piston that moves up and down with respect to the filling unit. The compression piston detects the compression pressure and detects the original position direction. And a block height detection mechanism for detecting the relative position of the compression piston with respect to the filling portion, and means for detecting the compression height of the block when the pressure sensor operates. I decided to use it. Here, the transport mechanism serves to feed the shredded waste accumulated in the hopper to the filling section. Then, the shredded chips filled in this filling section are compressed by the compression piston to manufacture blocks, and in order to make the height of the blocks manufactured in sequence almost uniform, the compression height is detected by the block height detection mechanism. To detect When the height is less than a predetermined value, the shredder scraps are further sent from the transport mechanism to the filling section for compression, and the compression is repeated if necessary until the predetermined block height is reached.

Further, when the compression height of the block detected during the operation of the pressure sensor is within a predetermined range, the compressed block is discharged. This configuration discloses that the compression operation may be repeated up to a predetermined block height.

As a more specific structure of the block height detecting mechanism, a slit plate having a plurality of comb-teeth slits and a slit sensor for counting the number of slits in the slit plate are used, and the slit plate is a compression piston. It was decided to use the means of raising and lowering as the. Here, the slit sensor counts the number of slits passing through to quantify the compressed block height, and the subsequent processing can be performed as a digital amount. Further, in the means using the transmission type photoelectric sensor as the slit sensor, the passage of the comb teeth of the slit plate can be optically detected reliably.

Further, in the block height detecting mechanism,
By using the count number of the slit corresponding to an appropriate block height as a reference, the actual count number is compared with the reference count number, and the means for increasing or decreasing the filling time of the shredded waste from the transport mechanism such as a screw is used. I decided. In this means, the fact that the actual count number is larger than the reference count number indicates that the block height is less than the predetermined value. The operation is carried out after a longer period of time to add more cutting dust. On the other hand, when the actual count number is small, the block height exceeds the predetermined value, so the next transport time is set shorter than immediately before. In this case, the operation time of the transport mechanism in the next compression operation may be determined by using a means in which the reference count number is centered and the increase / decrease time is determined in advance for each count value.

Furthermore, a means of providing a document shredding machine in the preceding stage of the compression mechanism is used, and the function of performing the compression operation subsequent to the document shredding is selectively adopted.

[0011]

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 shows an example of a compressor for shredded waste used to realize the present invention.
Is a hopper for sequentially accumulating shredded scraps shredded by a document shredder (not shown), and 2 is immediately below the hopper 1, and cuts shredded chips dropped from the hopper 1 in a fixed direction ( A conveying screw 3 which is a conveying mechanism for continuously conveying in the left direction in the figure) is a screw motor for driving the conveying screw 2. Reference numeral 4 is a blocking unit for compressing shredded chips to manufacture blocks, which has the following configuration. That is, 5 is a filling part for compressing the conveyed shredded chips to form blocks, and 6 is a compression piston for moving down to the filling part 5 to compress the shredded chips. The compression piston 6 is provided with a pressure sensor 7, and when the set compression pressure is reached, the compression piston 6 is reversely rotated and lifted to return to a fixed position.

Here, the size of the block, that is, the height, is determined by the amount of shredded chips accumulated in the filling section 5. For example, as shown in FIG. If the number is small, the block 8 will be thin. Further, if the shredded waste is compressed by an amount larger than the apparent filling amount due to paper quality and properties, the same problem will occur. In order to avoid this, in this embodiment, the block height detection mechanism 9 is provided as shown in FIG.
The block height detection mechanism 9 includes a slit plate 10 that moves up and down in conjunction with the compression piston 6, and a slit sensor 11 for counting the number of slits that have passed. It should be noted that the slit plate 10 is provided with a plurality of slit groups 10a that are continuous in the up-and-down direction, and the number of passing counts is obtained by counting ON / OFF when the slit groups 10a pass through the slit sensor 11.

In the above structure, the operation of manufacturing the shredded waste block will be described. First, the conveying screw 2 is rotated for a certain period of time to fill the filling portion 5 with the shredded waste, and the compression piston 6 is lowered. Compress the shreds. At the same time, the passing count number of the slit group 10a at the time when the pressure sensor 7 is operated is stored. In other words,
The block height detection mechanism 9 detects the position of the compression piston 6 at the time when the pressure sensor 7 is activated and the compression of the block is completed, and the height of the block is determined by this. In this case, if the height of the block is within the predetermined range, the compressed block is discharged, but if the height is less than the predetermined height, the compression piston 6 is moved according to the pressure detected by the pressure sensor 7. Raise and hold the block without ejecting it. In this way, the determination as to whether the block is discharged or held is made by comparing whether or not the actual passing count number falls within the allowable range based on the preset count number. That is, when the height of the block does not reach the predetermined range, the passing count number becomes larger than the set count number, and in this case, it is determined to hold the block. Then, when the block is held, subsequently, the conveying screw 2 is operated to add shredded debris, the compression piston 6 is lowered again, and the height of the compression block is detected by the passing count number.
Then, if necessary, this operation is repeated a plurality of times, and the block is discharged only when the height of the block reaches a predetermined range.

The total conveying time of the conveying screw 2 required for the first block formation described above is stored by a separate means, and if the shredded waste having the same paper quality and properties as the first time is conveyed next time. , The first conveying screw 2
If the shredded waste is transported for the same time as the total transport time of
The filling amount of shredded waste is almost appropriate according to the predetermined block. In other words, in each compression block formation, the filling amount is determined based on the conveyance time of the conveyance screw required for the compression block formation immediately before that. Moreover, since the block height is detected by the block height detecting mechanism 9 in the compression work at that time, even if the paper quality or the like suddenly changes, the block formation can be achieved without a large error.

Next, the fine adjustment of the filling amount every time will be described. FIG. 3 shows the slit plate 10 and the slit sensor 11.
A more specific example of the slit sensor 11
As the slit plate 10, a comb-teeth-shaped plate having twelve combs in the vertical direction is used as the slit plate 10. Note that the number of teeth is merely an example, and it is not necessary to limit the number to 12. Then, the slit sensor 11 relatively captures ON / OFF when the slit plate 10 passes, and sequentially sets each ON / OFF as a variable value as a variable value. Therefore, the variable value is set to 1 to 24, which corresponds to the above-mentioned passage count number. Among these variables, if the compression piston descending amount k when the compression block is first obtained to obtain a compression block in a preferable state is, for example, k = 12, this is set as an initial value, and at that time, Determine the filling time of the shreds (eg 2.0 seconds). Here, if the passing count number is smaller than k = 12, it means that the filling is excessive, and if the passing count number is too large, it means that the filling is insufficient. Correct according to the amount. In the present embodiment, for example, it is programmed in advance to perform the correction in the relationship shown in FIG. Here, the vertical axis is a graph of the correction seconds set according to the count number with the initial value k = 12 as a reference point. The correction value is limited even if the upper and lower limits of the correction range exceed the count numbers 4 and 20. This is because if the value deviates from the initial value more than this, it can be considered that the filling amount is not normal. The correction of the filling time when the compression is performed using this correlation is as shown in FIG. That is, the passage count number at the time when the compression is performed and the pressure sensor operates is read, and this is corresponded to the graph of FIG. 4, the increase / decrease value of the filling time is calculated, and the next filling time is determined. By doing so, it becomes possible to properly adjust the filling amount even when the paper quality or the like changes every time. FIG. 6 shows a flow sheet of the adjusting operation of the filling time.

In the present embodiment, the slit plate 10 that moves up and down and the slit sensor 11 at the fixed position are used to determine the filling amount of shredded chips, but the relationship is reversed and the slit plate 10 is reversed. Slit sensor 1 with the fixed position
1 may be moved up and down. Further, an example in which a comb-teeth-shaped plate is used as the slit plate 10 and a photoelectric sensor is used as the slit sensor 11 has been shown, but not only this configuration but also the position of the compression piston 6 when the pressure sensor 7 operates The present invention can be achieved with a combination of a magnet and a Hall element, or a combination of a magnet and a reed switch as long as they can be relatively detected. In addition, although the structure is complicated, even if the binary information such as a bar code is provided in the ascending / descending direction and is read by a CCD or the like to be digitized, the present invention eliminates this. Not something to do.

Further, in the present embodiment, in order to control the filling amount, the passing count number is detected and processed for each compression process, but the same quality paper is used in the process of shredding by a normal document shredding machine. Since the shredding process is often performed, the detection / processing of the present invention may be performed intermittently not once every time but once every plural times.

The present invention relates to a structure for compressing shredded scraps into blocks and may be integrated with a document shredder, but it need not necessarily be integrated with the document shredder. Absent. 7 and 8 schematically show the document shredding function incorporated in the compressor of the present invention.
Reference numeral 21 denotes a hopper having the same configuration as that shown in FIG. 1, and throws shredded chips with the hopper cover 22 open. On the other hand, when the hopper cover 22 is closed, the surface of the hopper cover 22 can be used as a paper introduction surface for the document shredding mechanism 23. It is also possible to provide a mechanism for interrupting the power supply with a micro switch (not shown) so that the document shredding mechanism 23 does not operate when the hopper cover 22 is opened.

[0019]

According to the present invention, the shredded chips are conveyed from the hopper to the blocking section by the transfer mechanism, and the blocking section is provided with a filling section for filling the shredded chips from the transfer mechanism. It consists of a compression piston that moves up and down with respect to the filling section, and this compression piston has a pressure sensor for detecting the compression pressure and restoring it in the original position direction.
Since the block height detection mechanism for detecting the relative position of the compression piston with respect to the filling portion is provided, and the compression height of the block at the time of operation of the pressure sensor is detected, the block height is calculated in each block compression. Can be accurately detected. Therefore, if the block height is less than the predetermined value, the filling amount of shredded scraps should be increased,
On the contrary, if the block height exceeds the predetermined value, the compression block having the predetermined height can be manufactured by reducing the filling amount next time. Then, since the compressed block is discharged when the block height is within a predetermined range, the height of the discharged block becomes substantially uniform, and the subsequent processing becomes easy.

Further, as the structure of the block height detecting mechanism, a slit plate having a plurality of comb-teeth-shaped slits and a slit sensor for counting the number of slits of the slit plate are adopted, and the slit plate is used for raising and lowering the compression piston. Since it was moved up and down along with it, the block height can be detected as a digital amount by the number of counts of the slits that passed through the slit sensor, and the subsequent processing can be performed quantally, so processing programs, etc. Is easy to build. Since the transmission type photoelectric sensor is adopted as the slit sensor, its operation is highly reliable and maintenance and inspection is easy.

Further, in the block height detection mechanism, the actual count number is compared with the reference count number based on the count number of the slit corresponding to an appropriate block height, and the filling time of the shredded waste from the transport mechanism is compared. Since it is configured to increase / decrease, once the predetermined block height is set as a reference value and it is determined by a digital amount, if the block height is lower than this, the next filling amount is increased and conversely it is increased. In some cases, the operation of reducing the filling amount can be easily achieved. Therefore, even if the paper quality changes during the work, the block heights can be instantly made uniform to correspond to this, and a separate paper quality determination work is not required.

Further, since the conveying screw driven by the screw motor is used as the conveying mechanism, the fine adjustment of the filling amount is easy. Furthermore, since the document shredding machine is provided in the preceding stage of the compression mechanism, the shredding and compression of the documents can be continuously performed by one configuration, and the labor for the worker can be reduced. became.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a case where the compression height of a block is insufficient.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view showing an embodiment of a block height detection mechanism.

FIG. 4 is a graph showing an additional filling amount when finely adjusting the filling amount of shredded waste.

FIG. 5 is a list showing adjustment values of a filling amount when compression is continuously performed based on the graph of FIG.

FIG. 6 is a flow sheet showing a filling process of shredded waste.

FIG. 7 is a schematic view showing an example in which a shredding mechanism is incorporated immediately before the compression mechanism.

FIG. 8 is a schematic view showing the shredded state of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 hopper 2 Conveyor screw 3 screw motor 4 Blocking unit 5 Filling section 6 compression pistons 7 Pressure sensor 8 blocks 9 block height detection mechanism 10 slit plate 11 Slit sensor

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. A compressor for compressing shredded waste such as paper into a block shape, wherein the shredded waste is conveyed from a hopper to a blocking section by a transport mechanism, and the blocking section cuts the shredded waste. It is composed of a filling portion filled from the transport mechanism and a compression piston that moves up and down with respect to the filling portion, and this compression piston has a pressure sensor for detecting a compression pressure and restoring the original position direction, A document shredding compressor having a block height detection mechanism for detecting a relative position of the compression piston with respect to the filling portion, and detecting a compression height of the block when the pressure sensor is operated. 2. The document shredding compressor according to claim 1, wherein the compressed block is discharged if the compression height of the block detected during the operation of the pressure sensor is within a predetermined range. 3. A block height detecting mechanism comprises a slit plate having a plurality of comb-teeth-shaped slits, and a slit sensor for counting the number of slits in the slit plate. The document shredding compressor according to claim 1, which moves up and down. 4. The document shredding compressor according to claim 3, wherein the slit sensor is a transmissive photoelectric sensor. 5. A block height detection mechanism, wherein the number of slits corresponding to an appropriate block height is used as a reference.
Compare the actual count number with the reference count number,
5. The document shredding compressor according to claim 3, wherein the time for filling the shredded waste from the transport mechanism is increased or decreased. 6. The document shredding compressor according to claim 1, wherein the conveying mechanism is a conveying screw driven by a screw motor. 7. The document shredding compressor according to claim 1, further comprising a document shredding machine before the compression mechanism.