JPS63101261A - Sheet work storage tray - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make a discharge sheet accurately stowable in alignment irrespective its curling habit, by installing a first guide member, coming into contact with a tip of the discharge sheet and leading it to the lower part, and a second guide member, forming a storage space, as well as a driving roller rotating in an admission direction of the sheet tip. CONSTITUTION:When a chart tip 7' reaches the position of a first guide member 14, it comes into contact with this member at an obtuse angle and guided downward, getting into the inside of a storage space 16. And the tip 7' is advanced forward by a rotating grip roller 24, held between the guide member 14 and the roller 24, and when reaching a lower end of the space 16, it comes to a stop, but the rear end side of a chart 7 still remains delivered by a platen roller in succession whereby it comes to a loop form, and guided by a guide 23 and a case 22 of a facsimile device, thus it is discharged to the outside of a device by an open part 21. At this time, the tip 7' is held between the roller 24 and the guide member 14, and the loop's lower side is not slipped up owing to frictional force by a friction piece 26 at an upper end of the member 14, thus only the upper side is discharged. Next, after recording completion, the rear end of the chart 7 is cut off, turned over and discharged to the outside of the device, so that it is in no case slipped off by its own weight.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (a) Industrial Application Field The present invention relates to a sheet material film □ray t, which is installed in the paper ejection section of an image forming apparatus such as a facsimile machine or a copying machine, and The present invention relates to a sheet material storage tray that stores image-formed sheets discharged from an image forming apparatus.

(b) Prior Art In general, the sheet material storage tray installed in the heel image forming apparatus is not built into the apparatus main body, but is attached in a manner that projects outside the apparatus. An example of a facsimile+J apparatus equipped with such a sheet material storage tray is shown in FIG. The illustrated facsimile device 1 has a document table 2
An image reading and transmitting system that reads information from a document 3 that is being fed by an optical system 4 and transmits the image information; and an image reading and transmitting system that reads information from a document 3 that is sent above and transmits the image information; It is equipped with an image receiving and recording system having a thermal head 8 for recording. A document storage tray 9 is provided on the left side of the facsimile device 1 to store documents 3 that are sequentially sent out from the document table 2, and a document storage tray 9 is provided on the right side of the device main body 1 to store documents 3 sent out sequentially from the document table 2. A sheet material storage tray 11 for storing recording paper 7 on which an image has been formed and which has been cut into a predetermined length, eg, A4 size length, is provided so as to protrude outward. Note that 12 is a power supply section including a power supply device and the like.

Incidentally, in recent years, there has been a particularly strong demand for image forming apparatuses such as facsimile machines to be smaller and lighter.
Because these trays protrude on both sides, no matter how small the main body of the apparatus is, the actual installation space cannot be reduced much due to the protrusion of these trays. As a solution to this problem, it may be possible to put these trays together on one side of the device main body and save space for the trays on one side, but if the trays are concentrated on one side of the device main body in this way, the document Both drive systems for the recording paper will be concentrated on one side, which will not only reduce space efficiency inside the device but also complicate the drive system, which will not only reduce reliability but also lead to a significant increase in costs. .

Further, in the conventional image forming apparatus as described above, sheets on which images have been formed are ejected from the apparatus with the recording surface facing up and are stacked in order.

For this reason, when creating a record of a multi-page document, if you record sequentially from the first page of the document, the image-formed sheet that is ejected from the device will be placed on the tray with the first page facing down and the second page. Subsequent sheets will be stacked on top of it in order, and the sheets stacked in the tray will be in the reverse order of the original. Therefore, after the recording operation is completed, it is necessary to rearrange the image-formed sheets in order from the first page, a so-called page alignment operation, which is very time-consuming.

Furthermore, rolled paper, such as thermal recording paper used in facsimile machines, has strong curls and is difficult to store in an orderly manner on a conventional linear tray surface. Recently, in line with the miniaturization of the main body of the apparatus, there has been a trend to reduce the outer diameter of the roll as much as possible without changing the length of the paper, and one way to do this is to make the diameter of the core as small as possible. As a result, curling has become more noticeable, and there has been a strong desire to develop a paper storage method that can accommodate this.

Therefore, in order to solve these problems, the present applicant has developed a C! - Invented and applied for a material storage tray first (Japanese Patent Application No. 134175/1982).

In FIG. 5, the sheet material storage tray 13 is provided near the bottom of the sheet discharge port of the facsimile main body 1, and as shown in detail in FIG. A first guide member 14 that abuts and guides the guide downward, and a second guide member 1 that faces the first guide member and forms a seat storage space 16.
It is composed of 5. This second guide member 15
is made of a plastic plate fixed to the stay 17 of the facsimile main body 1, and the lower end of the first guide member 14 is connected to the lower end of the second guide member by a pin 18. A click mechanism (not shown) is provided between the facsimile apparatus main body 1 and the first guide member 14 to lock the first guide member in the state shown by the solid line in FIG. The first guide member 14 is held in the closed position shown in the figure. However, when a large amount of recording paper 7 is stored in the sheet material storage tray 13 and the storage capacity is exceeded, the click mechanism that locks the first guide member 14 in the closed state is activated by the weight of the stored recording paper. The first guide and guide member 14 are automatically released by the pin 1.
8, and is locked by the stay 17 of the main body 1 in the open position shown by the two-dot chain line. When the first guide member 14 is open as shown in FIG.
The guide member 14 forms a sheet ejection guide section, and the recording paper 7 ejected from the facsimile machine 1 moves along this first guide member.

As shown in FIG. 8, the inner wall surface of the first guide member 14 is provided with a plurality of ribs 19, which reduce the contact resistance with the leading edge of the recording paper and smoothly move the leading edge of the recording paper into the storage tray 13. At the same time as being introduced into the storage space 16, when the first guide member 14 is locked in the closed position, the second
A narrow V-shaped closing portion 20 for grasping the tip of the sheet material 7 fed downward is formed between the guide member 15 and the guide member 15 .

Furthermore, when the first guide member 14 is closed,
An opening part 21 is provided at the upper end of the first guide member 14 so that when a long type of sheet material is stored, the looped rear end of the recording paper 7 is turned over and sufficiently discharged to the outside. It is being

Since the paper/material storage tray that was previously applied for is configured in this way, the thermal recording paper 7 that is fed out from the roll 6
is heated by the thermal head 8 according to the information, and the recording paper 7
Image information is recorded on the surface. Thereafter, as shown in FIG. 10, the recording paper 7 is conveyed by the rotation of the platen roller 6, passes through the cutter 10, and its tip abuts at an obtuse angle on the first guide member 14 forming the storage space 16. The leading end of the recording paper 7 is guided downward, and the leading end 7' of the recording paper 7 is held in a wedged state in the closing portion 20 at the bottom of the storage space 16. When the recording paper 7 is continuously fed out in this state, the recording paper 7 forms a loop through the opening 21 as shown in FIG. It is discharged outside the machine, and finally curls up and hangs down outside the facsimile loading device 1 as shown in FIG. Next, the cutter 10 operates and cuts off the rear end of the recording paper 7, and the recording paper 7, which had been hanging down outside the machine, is reversed in the direction of the arrow using its own weight and the rotational force of the cutter blade, and the leading edge 7′
is held in the V-shaped closing portion 20, and its rear end hangs down to the outside of the machine, resulting in the state shown in FIG. 13. This series of operations is repeated and the recording paper accumulates in the tray 13, so that the sheets on which images have been formed are arranged in page order, eliminating the need for page alignment operations and ensuring that even sheets with curly rolls can be gripped securely. That will happen. Furthermore, since the tray is also built into the main body of the image forming apparatus, it is very effective in terms of space saving.

(C) Problems to be Solved by the Invention By the way, in the above-mentioned sheet material storage tray, since the sheet material is held only by the catch in the narrow closing part provided below the sheet storage space, the sheet material is When the size of the paper is long or the number of sheets is large, it cannot be gripped completely and the punches fall off. In addition, when the sheet material is short, there is also a drawback that when the sheet material is discharged in a loop form from the opening, its elasticity causes it to be pulled out.

(b) Means for Solving the Problems The present invention aims to solve the above-mentioned problems and at the same time solve the various problems mentioned above. a first guide member that guides the
A sheet material storage comprising a second guide member that faces the first guide member and forms a sheet storage space, and an opening portion that allows the rear end of the sheet to be reversed at the upper end of the first guide member. The present invention is characterized in that a tray is installed near a sheet discharge section of an image forming apparatus, and a roller is provided that is driven and connected to rotate in a direction in which the leading edge of a discharged sheet enters the sheet storage space.

(E) Effect By employing the above means, when a sheet discharged from an image forming apparatus is stored in a sheet material storage tray, the leading edge of the image-formed sheet fed out from the discharge section is placed in the first position.
The sheet comes into contact with the guide member, is guided downward, and is fed into the sheet storage space.

Inside the sheet storage space, rollers are driven and rotated in a direction to advance the sheet, and the sheet that has entered is held between the first guide member and the rollers and further moves downward. When the leading edge of the sheet reaches the lower end of the sheet storage space, the forwarding of the leading edge of the sheet stops, but the trailing edge of the sheet continues to be ejected from the image forming apparatus, and this part forms a loop and is inserted into the open section. It is ejected from the aircraft. When the trailing edge of the sheet is ejected from the image forming device, the sheet is reversed and the trailing edge hangs down from the open section outside the device, but this is because the leading edge of the sheet is being acted upon by the rollers. ,
The sheet will not fall out of the device.

(F) Embodiments Hereinafter, embodiments embodying the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. In the drawings, members and parts that are the same or equivalent to those of the conventional example are designated by the same reference numerals and explained.

As shown in FIG. 1a, the leading edge 7' of the recording paper 7 discharged from the facsimile machine 1 comes into contact with the lower part of the sheet discharge section located behind the platen roller 6 and cutter 10 of the facsimile machine 1. The first to lead this downward
A sheet material storage tray 13 is provided, which includes a guide member 14 and a second guide member 15 fixed to the main body of the apparatus to face the first guide member 14 and form a sheet storage space 16. There is. These guide members are
A plastic plate or a material with a large number of wires arranged vertically, etc., can be used to prevent the movement of the recording paper and store it in the storage space 16.
It consists of a member that can be guided inside. The first guide member 14 and the second guide member 15 are connected at their lower ends by a pin 18, and the first guide member 14
The bottle 1 is moved between the closed position shown in the figure and the open position where it is almost horizontal.
It is configured to be able to rotate around 8, and to be locked in position by a known fixing means such as a click mechanism. When the first guide member 14 is in the closed position, the angle formed between the ejected recording paper 7 and the guide member 14 is such that the recording paper contacts the guide member and smoothly moves downward into the storage space 16. The arrangement of the first guide member is adjusted so that it is guided at an obtuse angle.

In the seat storage space 16, a grip roller 24 connected to a drive mechanism such as a motor (not shown) is provided so as to be movable in the left-right direction in the figure, and a plate attached to the second guide member 15 is provided. Forced by a spring 25,
It is in contact with the first guide member 14. It is desirable that the grip roller 24 is driven in synchronization with the ejection of the recording paper 7 by the platen roller 6. If the circumferential speed of the grip roller 24 is adjusted to be the same as that of the roller, jams within the device 1 can be avoided. It is possible to prevent and also
In order to prevent the recording paper from being pulled out and falling while the grip roller 24 is stopped, it is desirable to configure the grip roller 24 so that it does not rotate in the opposite direction. Therefore, instead of driving the grip roller 24 by an independent drive source, it is also possible to connect the platen roller 5 and the grip roller 24 via a belt, a one-way clutch, or the like. In this case, since the platen roller 5 normally rotates in the reverse direction after cutting the sheet, the grip roller 24 intermittently rotates only in the direction of the arrow shown in the figure each time the sheet is conveyed.

When a long type of sheet material is stored above the first guide member 14 with the first guide member closed, the rear end of the looped recording paper 7 is inverted and directed outward. An opening part 21 is provided so that the water can be sufficiently discharged.
At this time, a friction piece 26 is provided at the upper end of the first guide member 14 to prevent the sheet material from slipping up.

In addition, in such a sheet material storage tray 13,
The distance from the lower end of the storage space 16 where the leading edge 7' of the recording paper 7 is located to the position of the cutter 11 etc. is shorter than the normal length of the recording paper used in the feeding direction, for example, the length of A4 size recording paper. With this configuration, a large number of recording papers 7 can be reliably stored in one lay with the leading end of the recording paper 7 being held within the storage space and the trailing end hanging down outside the apparatus.

Since the present embodiment has the above-described configuration, when the recording paper 7 fed out from the roll and on which image information is recorded according to the information by the thermal head 8 is stored in the sheet material storage tray, the recording paper 7 is As shown in FIG. 1a, the sheet is conveyed by the rotation of the platen roller 6 and passes through the cutter 10. When the leading end 7' of the recording paper 7 reaches the position of the first guide member 14, the leading end 7' contacts the guide member 14 at an obtuse angle, is guided downward, and enters the storage space 16. The leading end 7' of the recording paper 7 guided into the storage space 16 is
The grip roller 24 is driven and rotated as shown in the figure.
It is moved forward, and enters between the first guide member 14 and the grip roller 24 and is gripped by both. When the leading edge 7' of the recording paper reaches the lower end of the storage space 16, its advance stops; however, since the length of the recording paper is normally longer than the distance between the platen roller 6 and the lower end of the storage space 16, The rear end continues to be fed out by the platen roller 6 to form a loop, and is guided by the guide 23 and the case 22 of the facsimile machine 1 and discharged from the opening 21 to the outside of the apparatus. At this time, the leading edge 7' of the recording paper is gripped by the grip roller 24 and the first guide member 14, and the recording paper 7 is subjected to frictional force by the friction piece 26 provided at the upper end of the first guide member 14°. Therefore, only the upper part of the loop is ejected without the lower part of the loop slipping up.

When the thermal head 8 finishes recording on the recording paper 7, the rear end of the recording paper 7 is cut by the rotation of the cutter 10, and due to the weight of the recording paper and the action of the cutter, it is flipped out of the apparatus as shown in Fig. 1C. is discharged. At this time as well, the recording paper 7 tends to fall due to its own weight, but the gripping of the leading edge 7' of the recording paper by the grip rollers 24 and the first guide member 14 and the resistance of the friction piece 26 prevent it from falling. Ru.

This series of operations is repeated until the recording paper is stored in the tray 13, and the leading edge of the new recording paper is placed on the grip roller 2.
It is easily gripped by rotation of 4. When a large number of stored recording sheets are to be taken out, they can be easily taken out by lifting the sheet curved portion upward.

Next, FIG. 2 shows the operation when a short length of recording paper is ejected in this embodiment. Even if the recording paper 7 ejected from the facsimile machine 1 is short as shown in FIG. The recording paper 7 is securely gripped by the guide member 14, and due to the action of the friction piece 26, the recording paper 7 does not come out of the storage space 16 due to its elasticity. The end is the upper case 22
It is stored supported on the bottom edge of the If the next recording paper is ejected in this state, if it is a long recording paper, it will be reversed and hanging down together with the previous short recording paper, and if it is a short recording paper, the next recording paper will be ejected. It is stored in the same condition as the recording paper. Therefore, it is possible to sequentially align and store a large number of recording sheets regardless of their length.

Next, another example in which the sheet material storage tray is modified is shown in the third example.
As shown in the figure. In this embodiment, the center of the grip roller 24 is fixed to the second guide member 15, and the leaf spring 25 is removed. In such a configuration, it is desirable to provide a gap between the grip rollers 24 and the first guide member 14, and the width of the gap is slightly wider than the thickness of several sheets of recording paper. The center of the roller 24 is determined. Therefore, when storing several sheets of recording paper 7 in this sheet material storage tray 13, the recording paper 7 curves as shown in the figure and comes into contact with the grip rollers 24 and the friction piece 26, and due to the frictional force. The recording paper 7 will not fall off.

On the other hand, when the sheets continue to be ejected and a large number of recording papers 7 are stored in the tray and the force of ejecting and falling becomes stronger, the leading ends 7' of these recording papers 7 are connected to the grip roller 24 and the first guide. Since it is held by the member 14, there is no risk of it slipping off.

(G) As described in detail, according to the present invention, there is provided a first guide member against which the leading end of the discharge sheet is brought into contact and guides the discharge sheet downward; A sheet material storage tray is provided with a second guide member that forms a storage space, and has an opening at the upper end of the first guide member that allows the rear end of the sheet to be reversed. Since a drive roller is installed near the ejecting section and rotates forward in the direction in which the leading edge of the ejected sheet enters the sheet storage space, the leading end of the ejected sheet is gripped between the roller and the first guide member. This makes it possible to securely store the ejected sheet without fear of it falling out of the sheet material storage tray. In addition, since the sheet material is inverted outside the device and stored in a hanging state, there is no need to extend a special tray from the device main body.
It becomes possible to significantly reduce the installation space of the device, and at the same time, it is possible to store the sheet materials in a well-aligned state regardless of the curl of the sheet materials.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIGS. 1(a) to (c) are side views showing one embodiment of a sheet material storage tray according to the present invention, and FIGS. 2(a) and 2(b) are side views of the same embodiment when handling short sheets. 3 is a side view showing another embodiment of the sheet material storage tray according to the present invention, FIG. 4 is a schematic configuration diagram of a general image forming apparatus (Fuji E'J apparatus), and FIG. 5 is a side view showing another embodiment of the sheet material storage tray according to the present invention. Schematic configuration diagram of conventional image forming apparatus (Fuji E') apparatus, Nos. 6 to 13
The figure is an explanatory diagram of rotation. 1... Image forming device (facsimile device), 5...
・Roll, 6...Platen roller, 7・
... Sheet (recording paper), 8... Thermal head, 10... Cutter, 13-... Sheet material storage tray, 14... First guide member, 15
...Second guide member, 16...Seat storage space, 21...Opening part, 24...Grip roller.

Claims (5)

[Claims] (1) A first guide member that guides the leading end of the ejected sheet downward; a second guide member that faces the first guide member and forms a sheet storage space; and an upper end of the first guide member. and an opening portion that allows the rear end of the sheet to be reversed, and is configured to rotate forward in a direction in which the leading edge of the discharged sheet enters the sheet material storage tray installed near the sheet discharge portion of the image forming apparatus. , a sheet material storage tray comprising rollers in the storage space that clamp the sheet by means of a first guide member. (2) The sheet material storage tray according to claim 1, wherein the rollers are driven in synchronization with sheet discharge from the image forming apparatus. (3) The sheet material storage tray according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the roller is configured to be prevented from rotating in a backward direction. (4) The sheet material storage tray according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the roller is biased against the first guide member by a pressing member such as a leaf spring. (5) The sheet material storage tray according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the roller is installed on the second guide member.