JPH0223127A - Sheet classifier - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To classify sheets with a single sheet carry-out tray by mounting both a longitudinal transfer cassette and a lateral transfer cassette used when an image is hardcopied on a sheet and ejected onto the carry-out tray. CONSTITUTION:Longitudinal transfer sheets 3 loaded on a longitudinal transfer cassette 1 are separated one by one by a separation roller 5 and carried to a resist roller 9 with a feed roller 7. The sheet 3 is carried by the resist roller 9 as that the image transfer position meet that of the toner image on an image carrier 13. The toner image is transferred on the sheet 3 by an image-transfer and separation device 14 and the sheet 3 is carried via both a fixing roller 16 and an eject roller 17 and ejected onto the eject tray 18. Lateral transfer sheet 4s loaded on the lateral transfer cassette 2 are selected and separated one by one by a separation roller 6 and carried to the resist roller 9 by a feed roller 8. Similarly on the lateral transfer sheet 3, image is transferred on each sheet 4, carried via the image-transfer and separation device 14, the fixing roller 16 and the paper eject roller 17 and ejected onto the paper eject tray 18.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Industrial Field of Application) The present invention relates to a sheet sorting device for sorting copied sheets of an electronic copying machine or the like into a set number of sheets on a paper discharge tray.

(Prior Art) Conventionally, there are the following sheet sorting devices for sorting copied sheets of a copying machine or the like into a predetermined number of sheets on a paper discharge tray.

When copying a document using the main body of a copying machine or the like, the copied paper is ejected by a paper ejection roller and sent to a sheet sorting device equipped with a plurality of paper ejection trays.

Then, in order to sort the copied sheets, move the paper output trays up and down, adjust the height of each paper output tray and paper output roller, and eject the set number of copied sheets from each paper output tray. It has become.

(Problem to be Solved by the Invention) However, according to the sheet sorting device according to the above-mentioned prior art, as described above, multiple paper output trays are moved up and down, and copied sheets are placed on each paper output tray by a set number of sheets. Since the paper is sorted, the control and configuration such as height alignment between each paper output tray and the paper output roller of the main unit of a copier etc. is complicated, and paper sorting is more likely to result in defects.Also, sorting increases the size of the device and takes up less space. There are problems such as decreasing the

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, and its purpose is to selectively feed paper of the same size in the paper transport direction from two cassettes for vertical and horizontal transport. By making it possible to store paper, it is possible to sort paper even when using a sheet sorting device with only one paper output tray, the device can be made more compact, and it is possible to obtain more copy bundles than the number of paper output trays. An object of the present invention is to provide a sheet sorting device.

(Means for Solving the Problems) The present invention having the above-mentioned object is a sheet sorting device that is equipped with a paper feed section and can rotate and move an image to copy it onto copy paper, and selectively selects copy paper of the same size. A vertical conveyance cassette and a horizontal conveyance cassette were provided to feed paper, copy the image, and discharge it onto a paper discharge tray.

(Function) The present invention has a vertical transport cassette and a horizontal transport cassette. Therefore, with respect to these copy paper transport directions, it is possible to selectively transfer images from two cassettes, a vertical transport cassette and a horizontal transport cassette, for paper of the same size and copy them onto copy paper. The machine feeds paper, copies the image, and sorts the copied paper into a set number of sheets on one paper output tray. In this way, it is possible to sort sheets with only one paper ejection tray, and the apparatus can be made smaller. Also, it is possible to obtain more copies than the number of paper output trays.

(Example) The present invention will be explained below based on the illustrated example. 1st
The figure is a sectional view of a sheet sorting device equipped with an electronic copying machine embodying the present invention. In FIG. 1, l is a cassette for vertical transport, and 2 is a cassette for horizontal transport. The vertical transport cassette 1 carries A4, 85, etc. copy paper against the main body of the copying machine.
This is a cassette placed in the vertical direction, and the cassette 2 is for horizontal transport.
is attached to the main body of the copying machine in the form of the vertical transport cassette 1 rotated by 90°. A vertically conveyed paper 3 and a horizontally conveyed paper 4 are housed in the vertically conveyed cassette 1 and the horizontally conveyed cassette 2, respectively, and are alternately conveyed one set at a time, as will be described later. 5 and 6 are separation rollers. 0 The separation roller 5 registers the vertically conveyed paper 3 stored in the vertically conveyed cassette l, and the separation roller 6 registers the horizontally conveyed paper 4 through paper feed rollers 7 and 8, respectively. It is designed to feed up to roller 9.

Further, a charger 10, a developer 12, a transfer separation device 14, and a cleaner 15 are arranged around the photosensitive drum 13 as an image carrier, and an image is formed by a normal electrophotographic process. That is, the photosensitive drum 1 is charged by the charger 10.
3 is uniformly charged and exposed and scanned by the laser beam of the image writing device 11 to form an electrostatic latent image. Furthermore, a visible image is formed using toner by the developing device 12, and the image transferred to the transfer paper by the transfer separation device 14 is fixed by the fixing device 16. - The toner remaining on the photosensitive drum 13 is removed by the cleaner 15.

Next, the transfer paper is transferred to a paper ejection tray 18 by a paper ejection roller 17.
is discharged to the top. Note that 19 is a document reading device.

On the other hand, according to the block diagram of the sheet sorting device shown in FIG. 2, it is comprised of a circulating document feeder 30, a document reading device 31, an image memory 32, an image forming device 33, and a control device 34. Here, the original sent by the circulation type original feeding device 30 is read by the original reading device 31 and the data is input into the image memory 32.
The data input to the image forming apparatus 33 is sent to the image forming apparatus 33 to form an image. A control device 34 controls the transmission of signals between the circulating document feeding device 30, document reading device 31, image memory 32, and image forming device 33.

Next, the operation of the device will be explained.

First, when sorting the copied sheets into a set number of sheets, the vertically conveyed sheets 3 stacked in the vertically conveyed cassette 1 in the paper conveying direction are separated one by one by the separation roller 5, and the paper feed roller 7 transport it to the registration rollers 9. A document reading device 19 reads an image on a document, an image writing device 11 equipped with a laser, and a charging device 10
A toner image identical to the image on the document is formed on the image carrier 13 by the developing device 12. Then, the paper 3 for vertical conveyance is conveyed by the registration rollers 9 so that the transfer position matches the toner image on the image carrier 13, and the transfer/separation device 14
The toner image is transferred onto the paper 3 for vertical conveyance, and the paper is ejected onto a paper ejection tray 18 via a fixing roller 16 and a paper ejection roller 17.

By doing this for the set number of pages set to pages 1 to 10, for example, pages 1 to 10 are conveyed vertically as shown in FIG.
One set of sheets 20 of pages is formed. Furthermore, this time, the paper 4 for lateral transport loaded in the cassette 2 for lateral transport in the paper transport direction is selected, separated into sheets one by one by the separation roller 6, and transported to the registration rollers 9 by the paper feed roller 8. do.

The image information read from the original by the original reading device 19 is rotated by 90'' onto the image carrier 13 by the image writing device 11 to form a toner image for the horizontal conveyance paper 4. It is carried out by the means described in Japanese Patent No. 59-10958.

The paper 4 for horizontal conveyance, like the paper 3 for vertical conveyance, passes through a transfer/separation device 14, a fixing roller 16, and a discharge roller 17, and is discharged onto a paper discharge tray 18. By doing this for the set number of sheets, another set of sheets 2 of pages 1 to 10 that were conveyed horizontally
1 can be done.

Here, since the image information copied on the paper transported horizontally is rotated by 90 degrees with respect to the image information copied on the paper transported vertically with respect to the paper transport direction, the image information for each paper The information location is the same. Therefore, by selectively feeding sheets of the same size vertically and horizontally, they can be sorted into a set number of sheets (for example, pages 1 to 10) as shown in FIG.

Next, FIG. 3 shows a flowchart of a program for the sheet sorting apparatus of the present invention. The flowchart shown in FIG. 3 will be explained below.

First, in step 1, the vertical transport cassette 1 is selected. Then, in step 2, sort mode is selected, i.e.
As shown in FIG. 4, for example, it is determined whether the mode is to copy a stack of sheets of 1 to 10 pages by stacking them alternately in the vertical and horizontal directions, and if the mode is the sort mode, the process proceeds to step 3, and the mode is set to the sort mode. In the group mode instead, that is, when creating a bundle of the same originals, the process advances to step 10. In step 3, the first page of the originals sent from the circulation type original feeder 30 is set in the manuscript reader 31. In the next step 4, the data read by the document reading device 31 is input into the image memory 32, and the process proceeds to step 5. In step 5, image data is output in correspondence with the copy paper fed from the vertical transport cassette. Copy on copy paper. That is, the charger output, development output, fixing heater control, etc. necessary for image formation are performed at predetermined timing to form an image on the transfer paper. If the original has not gone through one cycle, set the next original in step 7.
Return to step 4. Thereafter, the operations of step 4 and step 5 are repeated until the document from page 1 to page 10 is completed. If the manuscript has gone through one cycle, proceed to the next step 8.
Change the selection from cassette 1 for vertical transport to cassette 2 for horizontal transport, and proceed to step 9. In step 9, it is determined whether the set number has been completed, and if the set number has not been reached, return to step 3 and complete the settings. If the number has been reached, the operation ends. When copies are made in this sort mode, the originals of pages 1 to 10 are stacked in a set number and copied, as shown in FIG.

Next, if it is determined in step 2 that the mode is not the sort mode but the group mode, the process proceeds to step 10. Set to . In the next step 11, the set original is read by the original reading device 31, data from the reading section is input to the image memory 32, and the process proceeds to step 12. In step 12, the image data for the vertical transport cassette 1 is output to perform image formation. In step 13, it is determined whether the set number of documents has been completed, and if the set number of documents has not been completed, step 12 is performed.
Return to , and repeat the same steps until the set number of originals have been copied. If the set number has been completed, the process advances to step 14 and selects the cassette 2 for horizontal conveyance.In the next step 15, it is determined whether or not the originals have gone through one cycle, and once the originals have gone through one cycle, the operation is stopped. In this group mode as well, bundles of identical documents are created alternately in the vertical and horizontal directions. If the original has not gone through one cycle, the next original is set in step 16 and the process returns to step 11.

(Other Embodiments) FIGS. 5 and 6 are other embodiments of the present invention, and 22
The paper sorting shown above is for when combined with the device. In this case, by discharging sheets vertically and horizontally into each of the bins 23a to 23d, it is possible to sort the number of copies (four or more bins in FIG. 5) due to the number of bins. This is shown in FIG.

At first, copy the bottom copy bundle 20a by the number of bins, in this case 4.
Make copies 0 Next, circulate the original once again to make the next four copies 21a. Circulate again to create a copy bundle of 20b0
In the above manner, a bundle of copies greater than the number of bins can be obtained.

FIG. 7 shows another embodiment in which two copy bundles are obtained from one original document consisting of a plurality of pages, for example, pages 1 to 10. In this case, by continuously copying two sheets of each page from one original and discharging the sheets vertically and horizontally one by one, stacking as shown in FIG. 5 can be achieved. That is, here, there are two copies 31 of the first page, two copies 32 of the second page, and so on. Thereafter, when the sheets are taken out from the paper discharge tray, they can be divided into two sets, thereby making it possible to sort them into two sets of copy bundles. If this sorting operation is used, it is possible to obtain a copy bundle with twice the number of bins of the apparatus without recirculating the originals.

(Effects of the Invention) The sheet sorting device of the present invention has two cassettes for vertically and horizontally conveying sheets of the same size in the sheet conveyance direction in an electronic copying machine or the like that can rotate and move an image and copy it onto a sheet. By selectively feeding paper from the cassette, it is possible to sort paper using only the paper output tray, and the device can be made more compact.

Furthermore, since sorting can be performed using a simple paper discharge tray, there is no need to use a special sorter or the like for special sorting, and when used together with a sorting device, it is possible to obtain more copies than the number of bins.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a sectional view of the sheet sorting device, FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the sheet sorting device, FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the sheet sorting device, and FIG. 4 is a view of the paper output tray when the present invention is implemented. FIGS. 5 and 6 are cross-sectional views and perspective views showing other embodiments of the present invention when combined with a sorting device; FIG. 7 is a perspective view showing a bundle of sheets sorted into sheets; A perspective view T showing an example of a case where two sheets are continuously copied from an original.
be. Symbol 1...Cassette 3 for vertical conveyance...Paper for vertical conveyance 5.6...Separation roller 9...Registration roller 11...Image writing device 13--Image carrier 15... Cleaning device description 2...Cassette for horizontal conveyance 4...Paper for horizontal conveyance 7.8...Paper feed roller 10...Charging device 12--Developing device 14...Transfer/separation device 16- ...Fixing roller 7... Paper ejection roller 18... Paper ejection tray 9.
...Document reading device O...Bundle of paper conveyed vertically L...Bundle of paper conveyed horizontally

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) A sheet sorting device equipped with an electronic copying device that is equipped with a paper feed section and can rotate and move images to copy them onto copy paper, which selectively feeds copy paper of the same size and copies images. A sheet sorting device comprising a vertical conveyance cassette and a horizontal conveyance cassette for copying and discharging onto a paper discharge tray. (2) The sheet sorting device according to claim 1, wherein a plurality of said paper discharge trays are attached.