JPH11316869A - Paper money counter - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain a stand-alone type paper money counter which counts the number of back notes of each denomination from bundles containing notes of various denominations. SOLUTION: A paper money placing part 5 and first and second discharging parts 12 and 13 are vertically arranged in the front of the case of the paper money counter. A sensor unit 80 which discriminates whether a bank note is true or forgery and the denomination is installed in a paper money carrying path from the paper money placing part 5 to each of discharging parts 12 and 13. A distribution guide plate 31 is switched in accordance with the discriminated denomination to discharge paper money to discharging parts 12 and 13 by denominations. It is unnecessary to distribute paper money with manual work by denominations as conventional, and further, the number of bank notes of each denomination is easily counted from bundles of bank notes different by denominations because bank notes can be handled on the front side of the counter case.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a stand-alone bill counting machine capable of judging the authenticity of bills and counting only bills.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Such a banknote counter generally has a banknote mounting portion on which a bundle of banknotes to be counted is mounted, and the banknotes mounted on the banknote mounting portion are formed inside one by one. Sent to the bill transport path, the authenticity of the bills arranged in the bill transport path is determined by a determination unit for determining the authenticity,
The number of bills only in the bills is counted, and the bills after counting are discharged to the bill discharging unit.

[0003]

The stand-alone banknote counter has a structure in which components are assembled in a small case that is convenient to carry. Accordingly, the transport mechanism and the like have a simple structure, and are generally designed to perform only authenticity discrimination and counting of a single denomination bill.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a stand-alone system capable of sorting bills by denomination from a bundle in which bills of different denominations are mixed by a series of bill counting operations and discriminating the authenticity of each denomination bill. It is to propose a banknote counting machine of the type.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention provides a bill placement section for placing bills to be counted, a bill discharge section for discharging the counted bills, and a bill loading section. A banknote transport path from the placement unit to the banknote discharge unit, a transport drive mechanism for transporting the banknotes along the banknote transport path, and a determination unit for determining whether the banknotes transported along the banknote transport path are authentic The following configuration is adopted in a stand-alone type banknote counter having counting means for counting bills determined to be authentic bills by the discriminating means, and control means for driving and controlling the respective parts. It is characterized by.

That is, in the bill counting machine of the present invention, the bill discharging section includes at least a first discharging section and a second discharging section. The bill transport path includes a transport path portion curved in a U-shape from the bill placement section toward the first and second discharge sections. Further, a denomination determining means for determining whether the transported banknote is at least one of the first and second denominations is disposed in the banknote transport path. In addition to this, at the downstream end side of the transport path portion, sorting means for sorting the bills of the first and second denominations so as to be transported toward the first and second discharge units, respectively. Is arranged. Furthermore, on the front face of the counter body case, the banknote placement section, the first discharge section, and the second discharge section are vertically arranged. Further, the counting means counts, for each denomination determined by the denomination determining means, the banknote determined to be a true bill by the determining means.

In the bill counting machine of the present invention, a bundle of bills in which bills of different denominations are mixed is placed on a bill placement portion,
When the counting start command is input, the authenticity determination operation of the banknote and the counting operation for each denomination are started under the control of the control means.

The bills are fed one by one from the bill placement section to the bill transport path by the bill transport mechanism. While the fed bill is transported along the bill transport path, the authenticity is determined by the determination unit. Prior to, at the same time as, or after this determination operation, the denomination of the bill is determined by the denomination determining means.

[0009] When a counterfeit bill is detected, a bill counting operation is interrupted and a message indicating that the counterfeit bill should be removed is displayed as in a general stand-alone bill counter. After the counterfeit bill is eliminated, the bill counting operation is performed again from the beginning.

[0010] Further, based on the discrimination result by the denomination discriminating means, the bills are sorted for each denomination by the sorting means.
It is conveyed to the discharge unit prepared for each denomination.

Thus, according to the bill counter of the present invention, unlike the conventional bill counter, bills of different denominations can be simultaneously counted by one counting operation. In addition, the bill placement portion and the plurality of ejection portions from which bills are ejected in a state of being sorted for each denomination are both arranged vertically on the front surface of the bill counting machine case, so that bills to be counted are The operation of placing the bundle and the operation of taking out the bills of each denomination after counting can be performed from the front side of the bill counter. Therefore, the bill handling operation at the time of bill counting is extremely simple.

[0012]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of a bill counting machine to which the present invention is applied will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the appearance of a bill counter of this embodiment. As shown in this figure, in the banknote counter 1,
At the front upper portion of the case 4, a bill placement portion 5 is defined. The bills placed here are held in a vertically aligned state by a pair of left and right guide plates 6 and 7.
An operation surface 8 is disposed on a front portion of the bill placement unit 5. Various operation switches constituting the input unit 9 and a plurality of operation switches defining the display unit 11 are provided here. The display surfaces are arranged.

At the lower position of the operation surface 8, the first and second discharging portions 12, 13 as the bill discharging portions are arranged in this order from the upper side. A part of the pair of impellers 14 and 15 for discharging bills toward the discharge portion is exposed from the opening of the lower first discharge portion 13.

FIG. 2 schematically shows the internal structure of the bill counter 1. As shown in this figure, inside the case 4 of the banknote counter 1, a banknote transport path from the banknote mounting section 5 to the first and second discharge sections 12 and 13 is formed. This bill transport path is composed of a plurality of guide plates and a transport belt.

That is, the inclined bottom surface 5 of the bill placement portion 5
a pair of upper and lower guide plates 21 and 22
Defines a transport path portion. A pair of guide plates 23a,
The transport path portion is defined by 23b, and the subsequent portion is defined by guide plates 24 and 25 arranged in a line and a transport belt 26 arranged to face these. I have. The subsequent transport path is bent in a U-shape, and is defined by an arcuate guide plate 27 and a transport belt 26 facing the guide plate 27. The transport path portion following the U-shaped transport path portion is defined by a linear guide plate 28 and a portion of the transport belt 26 stretched linearly to face the guide plate 28.

A sorting guide plate 31 as sorting means is disposed in a portion of the transport path that is continuous with the transport path portion. The sorting guide plate 31 is capable of pivoting up and down around a rotating shaft 31a at a tip end thereof, and is pivoted up and down by driving means such as a solenoid mechanism (not shown). When the sorting guide plate 31 is at the upper turning position (the position indicated by the solid line in the drawing),
The lower arc surface 31b of the sorting guide plate 31 and the arc-shaped guide plate 32 define a transport path portion, through which bills are guided to the second discharge unit 13. On the other hand, when the sorting guide plate 31 is at the lower turning position (the position shown by the imaginary line in the drawing), the upper side surface 31c of the sorting guide plate and the guide plate 33 define a transport path portion, Through this, the bill is guided to the first discharge unit 12.

The transport drive mechanism for transporting banknotes along the banknote transport path partitioned in this way includes the following components. A feed roller 4 is provided on the bottom surface 5a of the bill placement portion 5.
1 is arranged. A feed roller 42 that is in contact with the bottom surface 5a is disposed downstream of the feed roller 41, and a transport roller 43 and a guide roller 44 that is in contact with the feed roller 42 are disposed downstream of the feed roller 42. Guide plate 2
A pair of guide rollers 45 and 46 are arranged at the downstream ends of the first and the second 22, respectively. Also, a pair of guide plates 23a, 23b
A pair of guide rollers 47 and 48 are also arranged at the downstream end of. Further, a pair of guide rollers 4
9, 50 are arranged.

A large-diameter transport roller 51 is disposed in a U-shaped transport path formed downstream of the guide rollers 49 and 50. Two guide rollers 52 and 53 are arranged in contact with the outer peripheral surface of the transport roller 51. A pair of guide rollers 54 and 55 are arranged on the downstream side of the U-shaped conveyance path portion, and a pair of guide rollers 56 and 57 are also arranged at a position in front of the sorting guide plate 31 arranged on the downstream side. Have been.

On the other hand, a discharge roller 58 and a guide roller 59 are disposed at a position closer to the first discharge portion 12 than the sorting guide plate 31. Also, the sorting guide plate 31
The discharge roller 6
0 and the guide roller 61 are arranged in contact with each other.

Here, the motor 62, which is the drive source of the transport drive mechanism, is located slightly behind and below the impellers 14, 15. A timing belt 64 for transmitting a driving force is stretched over a driving roller 63 attached to an output shaft of the motor 62. The timing belt 64 is guided by a guide roller 61 and a transport roller 4 via a guide roller 65 as indicated by a thick broken line in the drawing.
3, the guide roller 45 and the transport roller 51. An encoding plate 66 with a slit is attached to the motor output shaft.
The drive is controlled based on the rotation of No. 6.

The transport belt 26 is stretched over a guide plate 47, a transport roller 51, a discharge roller 58, and a guide roller 59, and is driven by a motor 62.

On the other hand, the pair of impellers 14 and 15 are designed to be driven by separate drive motors 71.

Next, a sensor unit 80 for determining the authenticity and denomination of a bill is attached to the back surface of the guide plate 23b.

FIG. 3 shows an outline of a control system of the banknote counter 1 of this embodiment. The control circuit 90 is mainly composed of, for example, a one-chip microcomputer, and
The detection output output from 0 is input to the control circuit 90 after A / D conversion. The control circuit 90 includes a CPU, a ROM,
It comprises a RAM or the like, and the figure shows functional blocks realized under the control of the CPU.

In the figure, a discrimination circuit 91 discriminates the authenticity and denomination of a passing banknote P based on the detection output of the sensor unit 80. The counter 92 counts bills determined to be bills for each denomination. When the discrimination circuit 91 determines that the passing banknote P is a fake bill, the drive control circuit 93 outputs the motor 6 via the motor control circuit 94 based on the determination result.
2, 71 are controlled. That is, these motors are stopped at a predetermined timing, and the counting operation of bills is forcibly stopped.

The operation mode setting circuit 95 reads out from the operation condition recording circuit 96 the operation conditions suitable for the identification and counting of the designated bill, based on an input command from the input unit 9. The drive control circuit 93 controls each drive portion so as to execute the operation mode set by the operation mode setting circuit 95.

The determination result of the determination circuit 91, the counting result of the counter 92, and the like are displayed via the display unit 11.

Next, with reference to FIG. 4, the operation of discriminating the denomination of bills performed by the sensor unit 80 of the bill counter 1 of this embodiment will be described. The image data of the banknote P is read by the one-dimensional optical sensor 83, written into the buffer memory 85 via the A / D converter 84, and accumulated. Banknote P
Is transported by the bill transport mechanism, the memory 8
On 5, two-dimensional image data is generated.
Since each image data is taken in as intensity data of light and dark, the two-dimensional image data represents distribution of light and dark.

Here, the standard image data memory 87 stores two-dimensional image data of each denomination previously imaged under the same conditions. Under the control of the control circuit 90, the determination circuit 9
In step 1, an image in the buffer memory 85 that has the closest light-dark distribution to that in the standard image is searched for. Thus, the denomination of the bill is determined.

Here, the pattern identification method, that is, the method of determining which of the standard image patterns the light / dark distribution pattern of the image data of the conveyed banknote P is closest to can be based on the following calculation. .

Dw = Σ | x−Cw | That is, the absolute value of the difference between the density x of each dot of the photographed banknote image pattern and each dot density Cw of the standard image pattern of the denomination w is calculated. For all dots in the area,
The sum dw is calculated. This calculation is performed for each standard image pattern of all denominations. And
Among the obtained dw, the one with the minimum value is determined to be the denomination of the target banknote.

It is needless to say that the calculation range is desirably the whole area of the banknote, but it is preferable to calculate only in a limited range from the viewpoint of calculation speed and memory capacity. That is, for each denomination, it is sufficient to calculate the portion where the most characteristic pattern is drawn, generally the upper left corner and the upper right corner of the bill.

To do so, two one-dimensional optical sensors may be used. That is, as shown in FIG. 5, a one-dimensional sensor for imaging the upper right corner and the upper left corner of the bill P to be conveyed is arranged. Further, in order to minimize the displacement of the calculation range, after detecting the upper edge c, the left edge d, and the right edge e of the banknote P, the regions f and g to be calculated (shown by hatching in the figure) Section).

The operation of conveying and sorting bills in the bill counter 1 of this embodiment is as follows. The bill P sent from the bill placement unit 5 to the bill transport path by the feed roller 41 is transported by the transport rollers 43 and the rollers 45, delivered to the transport belt 26, and transported by the transport belt 26. Roller 45 and conveyor belt 26
While passing through the sensor unit 80 disposed between the banknotes, it is determined whether or not the banknote P is a true bill and its denomination. Based on the determination result, the drive control circuit 93
Controls the drive mechanism 97 of the sorting guide plate 31 to drive the sorting guide plate 31 (see FIG. 3). Accordingly, the bills conveyed to the sorting guide plate 31 are discharged by the sorting guide plate 31 toward the corresponding denomination discharging unit 12 or 13.

(Effects of Embodiment) As described above, the banknote counting machine of this embodiment includes the sensor unit for identifying the denomination of the banknote, counts the number of banknotes for each denomination, Each time the bill is discharged to a separate discharge unit. Therefore, there is no need to manually sort banknotes of different denominations for each denomination prior to counting as in the related art. Therefore, the effect of simplifying the bill counting operation can be obtained.

Further, in the bill counting machine of this embodiment, the bill placing portion 5 and the first and second discharging portions 1 are vertically arranged on the front surface thereof.
2 and 13 can be arranged to install a bundle of bills to be counted from the near side of the bill counter and to take out bills of each denomination after counting. Therefore, handling of bills is simplified.

(Other Embodiments) In the above-described bill counting machine, bills are sorted into two kinds of denominations. However, bills are sorted into three or more kinds of denominations, and each bill is sorted. The banknotes may be discharged to the seed discharging unit.

Further, the denomination method of the bill may be other than the above method.

The method of determining the authenticity of a bill is as follows.
Since various methods conventionally used can be used as they are, their description is omitted in the above embodiment.

[0041]

As described above, the bill counting machine of the present invention is provided with the discriminating means for discriminating the denomination as well as the authenticity of the bill, and counts the bill for each denomination according to the discrimination result. It is configured to sort and discharge each denomination.

Therefore, according to the bill counting machine of the present invention, it is not necessary to manually sort bills for each denomination before counting as in the prior art, so that bills of various denominations are mixed. In this case, there is an advantage that the operation of counting bills of each denomination is simplified.

Also, in the bill counting machine of the present invention, a bill placing portion for placing a bundle of bills to be counted and a plurality of bills for separately discharging bills of each denomination after sorting and counting are provided on the front surface thereof. A configuration in which the discharge units are arranged vertically is adopted. Therefore, the handling of the bill can be performed from the front side of the bill counter, and there is also an advantage that such a handling operation can be extremely simplified.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external view of a bill counter according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic internal configuration diagram illustrating an outline of an internal configuration of the bill counter of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram showing an outline of a control system of the bill counter of FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a denomination discriminating operation of the bill counter of FIG. 1;

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing a bill reading area in a denomination discriminating operation of the bill counter of FIG. 1;

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Banknote counting machine 4 Case 5 Banknote placement part 12, 13 Discharge part 26 Conveying belt 31 Sorting guide plate 64 Timing belt 80 Sensor unit 91 Discrimination circuit 92 Counter P Banknote

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A bill placement part for placing bills to be counted,
A bill discharge unit from which the bills after counting are discharged, a bill transport path from the bill placement unit to the bill discharge unit, a transport drive mechanism for transporting the bills along the bill transport path, Discriminating means for discriminating the authenticity of bills conveyed on the bill conveying path, counting means for counting bills determined to be authentic bills by the discriminating means, and control means for driving and controlling each of the parts. In the banknote counting machine having the banknote discharge unit, the banknote discharge unit includes at least a first discharge unit and a second discharge unit, and the banknote transport path includes the first and second discharge units from the banknote placement unit. The paper currency transport path is provided with a transport path portion curved in a U-shape toward the portion, the bill transported, whether at least one of the first and second denomination bills A denomination discriminating means for discriminating is provided; At the downstream end side of the U-shaped transport path portion, sorting means for sorting the first and second denomination bills so as to be transported toward the first and second discharge units, respectively, is arranged. The bill placement portion, the first discharge portion, and the second discharge portion are vertically arranged on the front surface of the counting device main body case, and the counting means is in the form of a bill by the discriminating means. A bill counter that counts bills determined to be present for each denomination determined by the denomination determining means.