US3645378A - Edge feed transport system for document sorting and stacking - Google Patents

Edge feed transport system for document sorting and stacking Download PDF

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Publication number
US3645378A
US3645378A US29599A US3645378DA US3645378A US 3645378 A US3645378 A US 3645378A US 29599 A US29599 A US 29599A US 3645378D A US3645378D A US 3645378DA US 3645378 A US3645378 A US 3645378A
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Prior art keywords
carriers
documents
document
transport
carrier
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Expired - Lifetime
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US29599A
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English (en)
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Marck Jakubowski
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International Business Machines Corp
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International Business Machines Corp
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    • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
    • B07—SEPARATING SOLIDS FROM SOLIDS; SORTING
    • B07C—POSTAL SORTING; SORTING INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES, OR BULK MATERIAL FIT TO BE SORTED PIECE-MEAL, e.g. BY PICKING
    • B07C3/00—Sorting according to destination
    • B07C3/02—Apparatus characterised by the means used for distribution
    • B07C3/08—Apparatus characterised by the means used for distribution using arrangements of conveyors
    • B07C3/082—In which the objects are carried by transport holders and the transport holders form part of the conveyor belts

Definitions

  • ABSTRACT a document transport and sorting system utilizing an edge feed concept for transporting documents, one at a time, on unique document carriers, from a loading station to a plurality of unloading stations. At the unloading stations the documents are removed from the transport means and selectively deposited in a plurality of stackers.
  • FIG 4a EDGE IFEIED TRANSPORT SYSTEM IFOR DOCUMENT SORTING AND STACITING BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1.
  • the invention is in the field of document transport and sorting systems which may be used with automatic document sorting apparatus.
  • Another prior document transport system is one which carries documents suspended from carriers which are mounted on an endless belt, the carriers being positioned transverse to the direction of movement of the belt.
  • This system has the advantage that documents are carried at speeds independent of their size.
  • the document transport speed can be determined mathematically by the equation:
  • V, N X p/60 inches per second where: consists a phenolic bushings to the rod are at least two springsteel clips 50 which will serve to hold l document transport speed N the machine throughput in documents per minute p spacing between document carriers.
  • This invention relates to a unique document transport and sorting system of the type which carries documents suspended from carriers which are attached to, and positioned transverse to the direction of movement of the transport system.
  • the system developed and disclosed can handle documents at the rate of approximately 2,000 documents per minute with a transport speed of from -30 inches per second.
  • documents are placed in a document feed hopper, then separated one at a time by a separator, the separator feeding the documents to carriers of the transport means.
  • Selectors under the control of either automatic or manual means, selectively release the document carriers over stackers.
  • Unloading rollers at unloading stations withdraw the documents from the carriers and feeds them to the stackers. After the documents have been sorted, they may be removed from the stackers for further processing.
  • the document carriers which will be more fully described below, are designed to reliably carry documents of varying lengths and widths.
  • Each carrier is attached to an endless belt by a hinge and a latch means coupled to a carrier mounting plate which is attached to the endless belt.
  • a document separator which will be fully described below.
  • the loaded carriers move in succession over a series of unloading stations.
  • a stacker for receiving the documents.
  • a carrier carrying a document
  • a carrier latch is tripped.
  • the carrier under the control of a hinge means, swings down under the force of gravity, and engages the lower edge of the document into unloading rollers of the unloading station.
  • the unloading rollers withdraw the document from the carrier and present it to the stacker.
  • Documents withdrawn from the carriers are stacked at a linear speed sufiiciently low (less than 70 inches per second) to avoid document edge damage from impacts with the stackers. At velocities above 70 inches per second, documents begin to suffer damage when they strike metal or other hard surfaces.
  • the use of the unloading stations alleviates the adverse effects of static electricity and the flow of air on the stacking process.
  • Static electricity often causes documents to remain in a carrier after the carriers document holding mechanism is released.
  • the force of the unloading rollers on the document effectively overcomes the force due to static electricity.
  • a document release from a carrier might be caught in a flow of air and directed away from the stacker.
  • FIG. l is a representation of a document feed hopper and the front view of the separator used with this invention.
  • FIG. 2 is a top view of the separator shown in FIG. 1;
  • FIG. 3 is a detailed representation of the unique carrier which is used with this invention.
  • FIG. 4a is a view of the carrier of FIG. 3 in relation to the carrier mounting plate with the carrier in an unlatched position;
  • FIG. 4lb is a view of the latch end of the carrier of FIG. 3 shown in relation to the carrier mounting plate;
  • FIG. 5 is a drawing of the transport means, unloading stations and stackers
  • FIG. 6a shows the interposer side of the carrier selector disc
  • FIG. 6b shows the set-reset side of the carrier selector disc
  • FIG. 7 shows the details of the unloading stations
  • FIG. 8 shows a sorter control unit which may be used with this invention.
  • the document feed hopper A continuous loading document hopper may be used. This will eliminate the necessity for feed interruptions while the hopper is being loaded.
  • a diagrammatic representation of a hopper which is suitable for use with this invention is shown in FIG. 1.
  • the feed mechanism consists of a number of push gates 12.
  • gates 12 When a batch of documents, for example letters, are inserted into the hopper, gates 12 are released and driven via a fast traverse belt 20 until they come into contact with the back end of the inserted batch of letters.
  • the gates 12, under the control of the feed belt 21, move the documents along the hopper presenting them to a separator face plate 14.
  • the feed belt 21 may be driven by any suitable means.
  • the separator A separator designated 18 and shown generally in FIG. 1 and in detail in FIG. 2, provides means for transporting the documents located in the hopper to a transport means to be described.
  • the rate at which the documents are fed from the separator must be synchronized with the speed of the transport so that as the leading edge of the document emerges from the separator, it faces an unobstructed loading gap of a carrier.
  • This is accomplished by the use of sliding gripper pads 16 synchronized to the movement of the transport means. These pads are driven in a reciprocating motion by a cam mechanism, shown in FIG. 2.
  • synchronization of the cam mechanism is accomplished by coupling the cam shaft 24, though suitable drive means, to the document transport drive.
  • the pads are coupled through linkage means 26 to cam 28 which is connected to cam shaft 24. Superimposed on this motion is an oscillating motion of the gripper pads sliding guides 23 which brings the gripper pads into contact with the face of the document. Oscillating motion is imparted to the sliding guides 23 by coupling the guides to oscillator cam 30 by means of linkage 31.
  • the oscillator cam 30 coupled to the cam shaft 24 synchronizes the oscillating motion of the sliding guides 23 to the motion of the transport means.
  • oscillating separator means proper alignment between a carrier and a document is assured.
  • the transport means shown generally in FIG. 5 comprises an endless belt consisting of a chain of rollers 40 linked together by means of links 43.
  • the belt is carried around the transport frame by means of tracks 41 and sprocket wheels 49.
  • a transport drive chain couples one of the sprocket wheels 49 to the transport drive (not shown).
  • Mounting plates 55, each accommodating three carriers 42, are connected to the belt.
  • a carrier which is used in this system is shown in FIG. 3. It ocnsists of a full wall 44 made of aphenolic sheet or a moldable plastic.
  • a steel rod 46 is located along the upper edge of the carrier and is supported by three brass subhings 48. Welded to hold the document to the rod are at least two springsteel claim s 50 which will serve to hold the document in the carrier.
  • the rod 46 supporting the springsteel clips 50 has a crank 52 formed at one end and is loaded by a torsion spring 54 at the other end so that the clips are urged against the carrier wall with sufficient force to hold the document.
  • the operation of the carrier is as follows:
  • crank 52 As a carrier approaches a loading station, i.e., the output of the separator 18, the crank 52 is pressed down by a roller 45 attached to the transport frame, as shown in FIG. 5. The engagement of crank 52 with the roller causes the document holding clips 50 to rise off the surface of the wall 44. In this way, the document is allowed to enter an unobstructed gap between the carrier wall and the deflected spring clips 50.
  • crank then moves off the roller and the clips close under the force of the torsion spring 54 onto the document and holds it firmly in place.
  • each carrier Attached to each carrier is a spring strip latch 56 and a hinge means 53, as shown in FIG. 4a, the carrier being shown in a release position to be described.
  • the function of the latch is to release the carrier over a selected stacker in response to activation of a selector 60 shown in FIG. 4b. Details of the spring strip latch 56 are also shown in FIG. 4b where the latch is shown in an unreleased position.
  • a guide 58 is mounted on the carrier mounting plate 55 with latch 56 resting on guide 58.
  • the latch is tripped by the use of the selector 60 utilizing an interposer type trigger. The selector will be disclosed more fully below.
  • Selector A selector is shown in FIGS. 4 and 6. Its function is to trip the carrier latch 56 on signal.
  • a selector 60 is associated with each stacker and is located on a shaft 69 running along and mounted to the transport. Each selector consists of a disc 67 to which is attached three interposers 61, 62 and 63, as shown in FIG. 6a. The set/reset lever side of the selector disc is shown in FIG. 6b.
  • Solenoid actuators not shown, are used to place each of the interposers in its set or reset condition. Solenoid actuators which may be used with this invention is well known in the art. In FIG. 4, interposer 62 is shown in its reset position while interposers 61 and 63 are shown in their set position.
  • the rotational speed of selector 60 can be synchronized to the motion of the document transport thus assuring that a latch 56 will be in position to be knocked off guide 58 as an interposer passes over the guide.
  • the electrical signal for actuating the solenoid actuators is derived from a control unit. An example of such a control unit will be discussed below.
  • Each of the stackei's consists of a simple platform 81 and ,an aligning roller shaft and guide 84.
  • the platform 81 is mounted on a pneumatic servo piston 86 for the purpose of maintaining the top of the document stack at a common level.
  • Unloading stations A separate unloading station 70 is provided for each stacker, and comprises two pairs of rollers. These stations are shown in FIGS. 5 and 7. Documents are withdrawn from the carriers 42 by the first pair of rollers and 102 and fed to the stacker by the second pair 106 and 108. Roller 100 is mounted on drive shaft 103 while roller 102 is mounted on spring loaded pivoting arm 110. The second pair of rollers 106 and 108 are similarly mounted, roller 106 being located on drive shaft 109, roller 108 being mounted on spring loaded pivoting arm 104.
  • FIG. 8 is a block diagram of a sorter control unit which may be used with this invention.
  • each document When the sorting is accomplished automatically under CPU control, each document must be imprinted with a destination code which, when fed to the sorter control unit 200, controls the destination of the document.
  • This code can be placed on the document with magnetic or light sensitive ink and read therefrom by any suitable known means.
  • a document read station 204 is placed in the vicinity of the document feed area 202 wherein lies the hopper and separator shown in FIG. 1.
  • a coded document passes the read station, its destination information is read out and fed to a recognition and digitizing unit 206. la this manner, the information coded on the documents is digitized and fed to one input of an assembler 208.
  • a cycle counter 209 counts the number of cycles the machine goes through. For the purpose of illustration, a machine cycle will be taken as the time necessary for the separator shaft 24 to complete one revolution.
  • the cycle number designated the machine cycle identification number
  • the cycle number is combined with the digitized destination code in the assembler 208 and stored in a read buffer 210.
  • Read buffer 210 which can be either a shift register or cyclic memory, stores the combined destination and machine cycle identification number until the CPU becomes available.
  • the minimum capacity of the buffer is variable depending on the transport configuration. If it takes, for example, twenty machine cycles for a document to arrive at the first stacker after its read cycle, the read buffer should have the capacity to store at least twenty documents.
  • the use of the read buffer 210 allows for a time sharing use of the CPU, since, under these conditions, the CPU need be available only once every machine cycles.
  • the CPU When the CPU becomes available, it transmits instruction signals to the assembler 208 and to the memory address register 211 through address modifier 215 causing the contents of the read buffer to be transferred to a working area in the computer memory.
  • the CPU now processes this information in such a way that for each document, a machine stacker is assigned in the form of a binary number corresponding to the stacker number.
  • the processed information i.e., the stacker number and the machine cycle identification number, is then transferred to a sort buffer.
  • This sort buffer is basically an addressable memory.
  • the machine cycle identification number is used to indicate an address in the sort buffer.
  • the address locations in the sort buffer contain the destination stacker numbers for the documents.
  • a means must be provided to properly address the sort buffer at a succeeding cycle time. Such means is included in the circuitry of FIG. 8 and includes the cycle counter 209, the control cycle oscillator 226 and the address computing circuit 224.
  • N number of cycles necessary to transport a document from the read station to the first stacker.
  • a second input to circuit 222 is connected to the output of control cycle oscillator 226.
  • a selector latch corresponding to the selected stacker is set.
  • the set latch passes a power impulse to its respective selector solenoid which activates the respective selection mechanism Ml shown in FIGS. 4 and 6. In this manner, if the stacker number snored in address B, 20 is 1, then as the document, whose machine identification number is 20 passes over stacker 1, its carrier is released and the document fed to the first stacker.
  • a document transport system comprising a. document transport means comprising an endless belt on which are suspended a plurality of document carriers each of said carriers capable of carrying documents of varying dimensions and means associated with each of said carriers for enabling the selective partial release of carriers from the endless belt,
  • stacker means for stacking transported documents from said carriers and d. unloading means, for withdrawing said transported documents from partially released carriers and feeding them to said stacker means.
  • said stacker means comprises a plurality of stackers and said unloading means comprises a plurality of unloading stations, one unloading station being associated with each stacker.
  • selector means for selectively activating said partial releasing means to position documents on selected carriers in operable relationship to said unloading means whereby documents on said selected carriers are removed from their carrier.
  • said document transport means further includes carrier mounting plates coupled to said endless belt, hinge means for hingedly mounting each of said carriers to a carrier mounting plate, said means for partially releasing including guide means formed on said mounting plates and spring latch means coupled to each carrier, said spring latch means of each unreleased carrier being connected to said guide means, whereby disconnecting of a latch means causes partial release of its associated carrier.
  • said means for partially releasing further includes stop means coupled to said carrier mounting plates and stop restraining means coupled to each of said carriers to limit the travel of partially released carriers.
  • each of said carriers includes document holding clips spring bias means and means coupled to the spring bias and the holding clips for retaining said clips in a normally closed position, said meansfor retaining including a crank shaped end portion, said transport means further including means for creating a force on said crank shaped end portion to overcome the spring bias causing said spring clip to open allowing receipt of documents, removal of said end portion from the influence of the force creating means causing said clips to return to their normally closed position to retain inserted documents.
  • a document transport system comprising, a. hopper means for storing a batch of documents b. separator means for separating the documents one at a time from said batch of documents and for feeding each document to a transport means in a direction transverse to the direction of travel of said transport means,
  • transport means including a plurality of partially releasable document carriers suspended from an endless belt, for transporting documents from said separator means to a stacking means,
  • selector means for causing the partial release of selected carriers from said endless belt
  • stacker means for stacking documents received from said transport means
  • unloading means for removing documents from partially released carriers and for feeding them to said stacker means.
  • each of said carriers includes a hinge and latch means, activation of said latch means by said selector means causing partial release of said carrier from said transport means.
  • each of said carriers further includes spring clip means for holding said documents in said carriers.
  • each carrier being connected to a carrier mounting plate by a hinge and latch means
  • said carriers further include spring clips for holding the documents in the carriers.

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Cited By (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US3785640A (en) * 1972-08-01 1974-01-15 Ibm Apparatus for separating and feeding documents
EP0820818A1 (fr) * 1996-07-26 1998-01-28 Grapha-Holding Ag Dispositif et procédé de tri d'envois postaux
US6086065A (en) * 1997-03-20 2000-07-11 De La Rue Cash Systems Ab Apparatus for feeding sheets from a sheet store
US20040256794A1 (en) * 2003-03-07 2004-12-23 Ulrich Barthold Device for transporting sheet-shaped materials
DE102005031493A1 (de) * 2005-07-06 2007-01-11 Siemens Ag Verfahren und Vorrichtung zur Ablage von flachen Gegenständen

Citations (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CA554229A (fr) * 1958-03-11 International Standard Electric Corporation Mecanisme de transport pour le triage du courrier
US3059753A (en) * 1960-08-25 1962-10-23 Ibm Document handling system
US3312358A (en) * 1964-01-28 1967-04-04 Aerojet General Co Overhead trolley system for postal sorting apparatus
US3318435A (en) * 1966-03-03 1967-05-09 Syracuse Supply Company Conveyor carrier

Patent Citations (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CA554229A (fr) * 1958-03-11 International Standard Electric Corporation Mecanisme de transport pour le triage du courrier
US3059753A (en) * 1960-08-25 1962-10-23 Ibm Document handling system
US3312358A (en) * 1964-01-28 1967-04-04 Aerojet General Co Overhead trolley system for postal sorting apparatus
US3318435A (en) * 1966-03-03 1967-05-09 Syracuse Supply Company Conveyor carrier

Cited By (6)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US3785640A (en) * 1972-08-01 1974-01-15 Ibm Apparatus for separating and feeding documents
EP0820818A1 (fr) * 1996-07-26 1998-01-28 Grapha-Holding Ag Dispositif et procédé de tri d'envois postaux
US5994657A (en) * 1996-07-26 1999-11-30 Grapha-Holding Ag Device and method for sorting mailed pieces
US6086065A (en) * 1997-03-20 2000-07-11 De La Rue Cash Systems Ab Apparatus for feeding sheets from a sheet store
US20040256794A1 (en) * 2003-03-07 2004-12-23 Ulrich Barthold Device for transporting sheet-shaped materials
DE102005031493A1 (de) * 2005-07-06 2007-01-11 Siemens Ag Verfahren und Vorrichtung zur Ablage von flachen Gegenständen

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FR2092532A5 (fr) 1972-01-21

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