JP2007153529A - Sheet material registration device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize a non-actuator, and to reduce the size and cost of a device, by providing a sheet material registration device corresponding to various sheet widths, without requiring to move a reference wall and a carrying means for arranging a carrying position of a sheet material, in a sheet material carrying device of central standard carrying. <P>SOLUTION: This sheet material registration device arranges the carrying position of the sheet material, by butting one of a sheet material end surface on the side in the carrying direction against the reference wall arranged on a carrying passage, while carrying an obliquely feeding means carrying the sheet material and the sheet material by the obliquely feeding means. The sheet material registration device is characterized by arranging the carrying position of the sheet material with respective paper widths, by distributing and arranging the reference wall and the obliquely feeding means in a plurality as a set in response to the respective paper widths of the sheet material so as to be opposed from the substantial center of the carrying passage. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a sheet material registration apparatus provided in a conveyance path of a sheet material conveyance apparatus used in an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and a printer.

  An example of a method for correcting a sheet material skewed in a conveyance path to a design reference position / posture in a sheet material registration apparatus of a sheet material conveyance apparatus used in an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, a facsimile machine, a printer, etc. As follows. There is a sheet material registration apparatus that corrects the position / posture of the sheet material along the end surface of the sheet material while the sheet material is conveyed in a predetermined direction while the sheet material is conveyed in a predetermined direction in the conveyance path. .

  In the sheet material registration apparatus described in Patent Document 1, a skew feeding means is configured by a driving roller for conveying a sheet material and a roller disposed opposite to the driving roller in a posture having a predetermined inclination angle. The sheet material is registered by abutting one end surface of the sheet material conveyed by the oblique feeding means against a reference wall having a reference surface for extending the sheet material end surface. A paper feed cassette is described as an example.

The sheet material registration device described in Patent Document 2 is a sheet by abutting the both end surfaces of the sheet material by moving a jogger having a reference surface for aligning the end surface of the sheet material to a position corresponding to the sheet width by an actuator. Register the material. An intermediate stack device is described as an example.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-130299 (page 4, Fig. 2) Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-258900 (page 4, Fig. 2)

  In general, in a sheet material conveying apparatus, the conveyance reference position is generally located at 1) one-side reference conveyance located on one end surface side along the sheet material conveyance direction, and 2) at the center of the sheet width. It can be roughly divided into the central reference transport.

  As an advantage of one-side reference conveyance, even if it is a sheet material of a different size, since the sheet material end face on the reference side is at the same position on the conveyance path, the required registration means can be fixedly arranged, and the device There is an advantage of simplification. On the other hand, since the reference side end always passes through the same part even if the sheet width of the sheet material to be conveyed is different, the wear of each roller located on the reference side is remarkably generated as the number of durable sheets advances. There is a risk that the sheet material may be skewed, and the paper dust of the sheet material may be concentrated and accumulated at a reference position on the conveyance path.

  As an advantage of central reference transport, roller wear proceeds symmetrically from the transport center, so there is less risk of sheet material skewing compared to roller wear for single-side reference transport, and even against paper dust. Less concentrated and collected. On the other hand, the apparatus configuration must be able to move the means corresponding to the reference wall in the above-mentioned one-side reference conveyance according to the sheet width.

  In other words, it can be said that the advantages and disadvantages of the central reference conveyance are in general relation with those of the one-side reference conveyance.

  The sheet material conveying device of Reference 1 taking adaptation to a paper feed cassette as an example specifies the registration function for the above 1) device premised on one-side reference conveyance.

  In addition, the sheet material conveying apparatus of Reference Document 2 relating to the intermediate stack apparatus specifies the registration function for the apparatus premised on the central reference conveyance of 2) above.

  Therefore, an object of the present invention relates to a central reference transport sheet material transport apparatus in which the sheet material transport reference position is located at the center of the sheet width, and a reference wall having an abutment surface for adjusting the transport position of the sheet material, It is to provide a sheet material registration device that can achieve sheet material registration corresponding to various sheet widths without the need to move the sheet material conveying means. Realize down.

  In the sheet material registration apparatus of the present invention, the apparatus according to claim 1 includes an oblique feeding unit that conveys a sheet material and the sheet material end surface on the side along the conveyance direction while conveying the sheet material by the oblique feeding unit. In the sheet material registration apparatus that adjusts the conveying position of the sheet material by abutting against one of the reference walls provided on the conveying path, in the sheet material registration apparatus corresponding to each sheet width of the sheet material Are arranged in a set so as to face each other from the approximate center of the conveyance path, so that the sheet material conveyance position is adjusted for each sheet width.

  According to a second aspect of the present invention, the skew feeding means includes a driving roller and a driven roller, and the driven roller is a spur roller having a star shape having a plurality of teeth on a peripheral surface of a disc, and the spur The rotation axis of the roller is perpendicular to the reference wall, and the rotation axis of the drive roller and the rotation axis of the drive roller have a twist angle | θ | ≦ 30 °.

  According to a third aspect of the present invention, the skew feeding means includes a driving roller and a driven roller, and the rotation axis of the driving roller is perpendicular to the reference wall, and the rotation axis of the driven roller and the driving roller The rotation axis of the shaft is twist angle | θ | ≦ 30 °.

  According to the sheet material registration apparatus of the present invention, the sheet material conveyance reference position is located at the center portion of the sheet width, and the abutting surface for adjusting the sheet material conveyance position Therefore, the registration of the sheet material corresponding to various sheet widths can be achieved, and the apparatus can be reduced in size and the cost can be reduced by using a non-actuator.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 shows an image forming apparatus main body according to the present invention.

  FIG. 1 is a view of the main body of an inkjet image forming apparatus with central reference transport having a double-sided printing function according to the present invention. The flow of the sheet material and the explanation of the skew feeding means which is a feature of the present invention are as follows.

  The sheet material 5 loaded and accommodated in the cassette 2 is separated by a sheet feeding roller 6 and is fed into a sheet material conveyance path indicated by a one-dot chain line in the image forming apparatus main body 1. The configurations of the conveying roller pair 10, 12, 13, 21 and the spur obliquely feeding roller pair 15, 16, 17 arranged in the image forming apparatus main body 1 are all driven by the side located on the image forming surface side of the sheet material. It becomes a spur roller, and the opposite side is a drive roller. For this reason, the image forming surface in the course of drying is likely to occur when it passes through the roller, i.e., the ink is transferred to the roller surface and contaminated, and the stain is transferred one after another to the surface of the sheet material. It has a structure to prevent.

  After the separated sheet material passes through the conveying roller pair 7, if the leading end is sandwiched by the LF roller pair 9, printing is possible. Inkjet head provided while the carriage 3 reciprocates while the carriage 3 reciprocating in the vertical direction of the paper and the LF roller pair 9 conveying the separated sheet material move intermittently. 4 achieves predetermined image formation on the surface of the sheet material by ejecting ink droplets toward the surface of the sheet material. The leading edge of the sheet material is conveyed in the direction toward the outside of the image forming apparatus main body 1 after passing through the flapper 11 and the conveying roller pairs 12 and 13 according to the progress of image formation. In the case of single-sided printing, the sheet material is discharged out of the machine while remaining in that direction. On the other hand, in the case of duplex printing, when the rear end of the sheet material on which image formation has been completed is positioned in the conveyance section of the conveyance roller pair 12, 13, the flapper 11 switches the conveyance path by an actuator (not shown) and the conveyance roller pair 12, When the sheet 13 is driven in reverse, the sheet material is conveyed toward the conveyance guide 14 constituting the double-sided conveyance path with the trailing edge of the sheet material as the leading edge.

  Here, since the sheet material is sandwiched by only one roller pair of the conveyance roller pair 13, the sheet material conveyance direction is switched at high speed toward the conveyance guide 14 constituting the double-sided conveyance path. If the position / posture of the sheet material is deviated from the design reference position, the printed image on the back side of the sheet material may be formed at a position deviated from the predetermined position of the sheet material. The image forming apparatus main body 1 requires sheet material registration means for correcting the position / posture of the sheet material to the design reference position so that the above-described problems do not occur. As the sheet material registration means, a spur skew feeding roller pair 15, 16, 17 of the sheet material skew feeding means, which is a feature of the present invention, is disposed upstream of the conveyance guide 14 serving as a double-sided conveyance path. When the sheet material passes through the conveyance guide 14, the sheet material is alternatively conveyed along a conveyance path corresponding to the sheet width, and a spur skew feeding roller pair 15 serving as one of the sheet material skew feeding means. , 16,17. As a result, the registration operation is performed so that the sheet material is properly positioned at the design reference position corresponding to each sheet width.

  By this series of conveyance operations, the front and back sides of the sheet material printed on one side are reversed, and after passing through the conveyance roller pairs 21 and 8, the sheet material is fed again toward the LF roller pair 9 which is an image forming unit, This time, an image forming operation is performed on the back surface of the sheet material, and the sheet is discharged by the conveying roller pairs 12 and 13 to achieve double-sided printing.

  FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 show the configuration of the inkjet sheet material registration apparatus corresponding to the central reference conveyance provided in the double-side conveyance path. 2 is a top view of the conveyance guide 14, and FIG. 3 is a corresponding cross-sectional view XX. During double-sided printing, the sheet material is conveyed to the conveyance guide 14 from the direction of the arrow by the reverse operation of the conveyance roller pairs 12 and 13. The reference line 00 represents the conveyance reference position of the sheet material, and the sheet material is conveyed along the reference line 00 in the center of the sheet width. Corresponding to the sheet width of the sheet material passing through the conveyance guide 14, a plurality of skew feeding means and reference walls are arranged as a set.

  The skew feeding means described in claim 1 is a spur skew feeding roller pair 15, 16, and 17.

The reference walls that abut the end face of the sheet material according to claim 1 are the reference walls 18, 19, and 20.
Here, three sets of the skew feeding means and the reference wall as one set according to claim 1 are arranged according to the corresponding sheet width. Each pair includes a spur skew feeding roller pair 15 and a reference wall 18, a spur skew feeding roller pair 16 and a reference wall 19, and a spur skew feeding roller pair 17 and a reference wall 20. As a representative example, a set of a spur skew feeding roller pair 15 and a reference wall 18 will be used to explain the skew feeding means and the reference wall configuration.

  The spur skew feeding roller pair 15 includes a driving roller 15a and a driven spur roller 15b.

  The driven spur roller 15b is a star-shaped spur having a plurality of teeth on the peripheral surface of the disc, and is supported so as to generate a pressing force against the opposing drive roller 15a. It is supported by a support means (not shown) using the rotating shaft.

The angle between the rotation axis bb of the drive roller 15a and the rotation axis aa of the driven spur roller 15b is θ, and the oblique feeding means configured as described above has the rotation axis aa of the driven spur roller 15b perpendicular to the reference wall 18. It is arranged to be.
The operation of the skew feeding means is shown in FIG. The amount of deviation of the sheet material is δ (P0) with respect to the design reference position / posture. The sheet material is abutting surface of the reference wall 18 while turning its posture in a predetermined direction (P0 → P1 → P2 → P3) by the moment m generated by the drive of the spur skew feeding roller pair 15 which is a skew feeding means. Toward ss (////// part in the figure), the sheet is conveyed by a spur skew feeding roller pair 15 which is a skew feeding means. Then, after the end face of the sheet material hits the reference wall 18 (P3 → P4), since the rolling direction of the sheet material abutting surface ss and the spur, that is, the rotation axis aa, is a saddle, the spur oblique feeding roller which is the oblique feeding means Although the drive roller 15a and the spur 15b constituting the pair 15 have a twisted relationship of a predetermined angle θ, the teeth of the spur 15b that are in contact with the sheet material surface are indented scratches like a physical perforation on the sheet material surface. The sheet material is conveyed without generating the above. Therefore, the sheet material is conveyed by a set of sheet material registration means composed of the spur obliquely feeding roller pair 15 and the reference wall 18 so that the positional / posture deviation can be eliminated (P4, δ = 0). ).

  The oblique feeding means and the reference wall configuration are as described above, and the remaining two sets have the same configuration.

  Each set of the oblique feeding means and the reference wall as one set is distributed and arranged so as to face the reference line 00 in the order of the width of each sheet to be conveyed as shown in FIG. By changing the position z1 in the height direction of the street conveyance guide 14, a plurality of sets are arranged.

Here, if | x1 | <| w1 | <| x2 | <| w2 | <| x3 | <| w3 | and sheet width w to be conveyed,
(1) The sheet material | x1 | <w <| w1 | is composed of a pair of spur-feeding roller pairs 15 and a reference wall 18.
(2) The sheet material of | x2 | <w <| w2 |
(3) The sheet material | x3 | <w <| w3 | is composed of a pair of spur-feeding roller pairs 17 and a reference wall 20,
Registration transported.

  The operation states of (1) to (3) are described in the top views of FIGS. The sheet material behavior in the cross-sectional direction is shown in FIG. The sheet material having the sheet width w of (1) is Pw1, and is nipped only by the spur obliquely feeding roller pair 15 and conveyed by the lowest part of the conveyance guide 14.

  Similarly, the above (2) is the sheet material Pw2, which is nipped only by the spur skew feeding roller pair 16 and conveyed in a state of being crossed by the lowest part of the conveyance guide 14 and the guide having the height z1.

  The above (3) is the sheet material Pw3, which is nipped only by the spur obliquely feeding roller pair 17 and conveyed in a state of being traversed by the guides having the heights z1 and z2 of the conveyance guide 14.

  As described above, the sheet material registration apparatus according to the present invention makes it possible to register a sheet material according to each sheet width, and an incoming backside print is formed on the sheet material at a position corresponding to each reference wall. To achieve this. As described in claim 2, it is also in accordance with the present invention to improve the registration performance and the conveying force performance by superimposing a plurality of the spurs on the same axis.

  The twist angle | θ | according to claim 2 and claim 3 described later is a slip stick by a driving force component that does not act as a component in the sheet material conveyance direction of the driving roller after the end face of the sheet material is positioned on the reference wall. Roller marks such as spur scratches may occur on the surface of the sheet material, and it has been experimentally confirmed that it is possible to easily avoid the harmful effects particularly by setting | θ | ≦ 30 °. For example, a sheet material having characteristics such as inkjet coated paper and glossy paper that has a large amount of ink absorption has a low mechanical strength on the image forming surface. Therefore, θ is further reduced to reduce the conveyance stress to the sheet material. It is desirable.

  Further, an embodiment of the present invention described in claim 3 is described in FIG. This is a case where a pair of inclined feeding rollers, which is generally known, is applied to the present invention. By adopting a driven roller as a spur substitute according to claim 2, maintenance performance can be improved and cost can be reduced. More suitable for application to forming equipment.

Image forming device body Top view of sheet material registration device on double-sided conveyance path Cross-sectional view of sheet material registration device on double-sided conveyance path Slope feeding means explanatory diagram | x1 | <Sheet material registration operation top view of sheet width w <| w1 | | x2 | <Sheet material registration operation top view of sheet width w <| w2 | | x3 | <Sheet material registration operation top view of sheet width w <| w3 | Cross section of sheet material and sheet material registration equipment Second embodiment of the present invention according to claim 3

Explanation of symbols

1 Image forming device
2 cassette
3 Carriage
4 Inkjet head
5 Sheet material
6 Feed roller
7 Conveyor roller pair
7a Drive roller
7b Followed roller
8 Transport roller pair
8a Drive roller
8b driven roller
9 LF (line feed) roller pair
9a Drive roller
9b Followed roller
10 Transport roller pair
10a Drive roller
10b driven spur roller
11 Flapper
12 Transport roller pair
12a Drive roller
12b driven spur roller
13 Transport roller pair
13a Drive roller
13b driven spur roller
14 Transport guide
15 spur skew feeding roller pair
15a Drive roller
15b driven spur roller
16-spur inclined roller pair
16a Drive roller 16b.
17 Spur-feed roller pair
17a Drive roller
17b driven spur roller
18 Reference wall
19 Reference wall
20 Reference wall
21 Conveyor roller pair
21a Drive roller, 21b. Drive spur roller
22 Transport guide
15 'Skew feeding roller pair according to claim 3
15a 'Drive roller
15b 'driven roller
16 'Pair of skew feeding rollers according to claim 3
16a 'drive roller
16b 'driven roller
17 'Pair of skew feeding rollers according to claim 3
17a 'drive roller
17b 'driven roller
P, Pn (n = 1,2,…) Sheet material
Pwn (n = 1,2,3) Sheet material with sheet width wn

Claims (3)

  While conveying the sheet material with the oblique feeding means that conveys the sheet material by the oblique feeding means, one of the end faces of the sheet material on the side along the conveyance direction is abutted against a reference wall provided on the conveyance path, and In the sheet material registration apparatus for adjusting the sheet material conveyance position, the reference wall and the oblique feeding means are set as one set corresponding to each sheet width of the sheet material so as to face each other from the approximate center of the conveyance path. A sheet material registration apparatus that arranges a conveyance position of a sheet material for each paper width by arranging a plurality of groups.   The skew feeding means according to claim 1 is composed of a driving roller and a driven roller, and the driven roller is a spur roller having a star shape having a plurality of teeth on a peripheral surface of a disc, and a rotation axis of the spur roller Is perpendicular to the reference wall, and the rotation axis of the drive roller and the rotation axis of the drive roller have a twist angle | θ | ≦ 30 °.   The skew feeding means of claim 1 is composed of a driving roller and a driven roller, the rotation axis of the driving roller is perpendicular to the reference wall, and the rotation axis of the driven roller and the rotation axis of the driving roller Has a twist angle | θ | ≦ 30 °.

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