Xerox Corporation

David A D'Angelantonio

Paul N Richards

Brian Roy Ford

Lawrence R Benedict

Christian O Abreu

Andrew James Bonacci

Alfred J Claflin, Jr

Patricio G Medina

Jon M Beresniewicz

Jaime Soley

A charging device comprises a housing defining a charging chamber. Two tensioning shafts are mounted on opposite ends of the housing. The charging device comprises a control grid attached to the grid tensioning shafts, thus substantially covering the chamber opening. The control grid is comprised of a conductive material capable of being stretched along its length. As a result, the grid becomes flat when opposing rotating forces are applied to the two tensioning shafts.

Charging device with grid tensioning shafts

A sheet handling system for correcting the skew and/or transverse position of sequential sheets, especially those moving in a process direction in a sheet transport path of a reproduction apparatus to be registered for image printing, of the type in which the deskewing and/or side registration is accomplished by partially rotating the sheet with a transversely spaced pair of differentially driven sheet steering nips. The effective range of sheet size capabilities of such systems may be increased without steering nip slippage or other problems by applying a control signal proportional to the width of the sheet to a system for automatically increasing or decreasing the transverse spacing between the pair of sheet steering nips, so as to provide a much wider spacing for larger sheets yet still be able to handle small sheets. This may be provided as shown by automatically engaging only a selected pair of steering nips out of a selectable plurality of different fixed position sheet steering nips and disengaging the others by lifting their idlers out of the sheet path with cams rotated by a stepper motor with a rotation controlled by the sheet width signal.

Printer sheet deskewing system with automatic variable nip lateral spacing for different sheet sizes

A sheet handling system for a sheet transport path of a reproduction apparatus having a sheet skew correction system being fed image substrate sheets in the process direction by a sheet transport system, wherein it is desired to positively feed and yet effectively deskew a wide range of different lengths of sheets in the process direction. A plurality of identical but independent sheet transport units may be provided spaced along the sheet transport path in the process direction engageable with a sheet being fed through sheet transport path for positively feeding even very short sheets from one sheet transport unit to another and to the skew correction system. Yet these sheet transport units provide independently automatically disengageable nips for automatically releasing even a very long sheet from any unit when that long sheet is in the skew correction system. A different selected number of the sheet transport units are disengaged in response to a different sheet length control signal. A single stepper motor rotating a common camshaft in each unit may be used to reliably lift all the idlers of all the nips to be disengaged.

Printer sheet deskewing system with automatically variable numbers of upstream feeding NIP engagements for different sheet sizes

A corotron assembly comprising a coronode for generating an electrostatic field and including an electrically nonconductive protective guard having a U-shaped base member forming a channel for receiving the coronode wherein a plurality of finger elements are provided, extending from the sidewalls such that the coronode is recessed between the finger elements. Each finger element is further provided with a spherical radii tip for reducing the attenuating effects of the finger elements on the electrostatic field generated by the coronode.

Growing community of inventors

Webster, NY, United States of America

David A D'Angelantonio