Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Fumitaka Hyodou

Kunihiro Uotani

Takashi Fujii

Akira Hirose

Shiro Saeki

Masumi Ikesue

Yukitaka Nakazato

Goro Mori

Yoshihide Sugiyama

Hiroyuki Ishizaki

A finisher for an image forming apparatus and capable of changing the binding angle of a staple relative to a sheet stack to be bound, as desired. A stapler is rotatable substantially about the binding position thereof to change the angle thereof relative to a sheet stack. This maintains the binding position substantially constant in both of parallel binding and inclined binding.

Finisher for an image forming apparatus which rotates about a stapling

A finisher connectable to an image forming apparatus for surely discharging sheets to bin trays thereof without regard to the sheet size while preventing the sheets from dropping from the bin rays or from being inaccurately positioned on the bin trays. The finisher has a discharge roller for sequentially discharging sheets driven out of the image forming apparatus to the bin trays. The rotation speed of the discharge roller is controlled on the basis of size information representative of the size of sheets to be transferred from the image forming apparatus to the finisher.

Finisher for an image forming apparatus

A recycling automatic document feeder (RADF) for use with a copier or similar equipment for feeding a stack of documents to an illuminating position one by one, then returning each document, and repeating the cycle to illuminate the documents a plurality of times. A gate pawl is located movable into and out of contact with a document table. A feeding section has feeding means for feeding, a stack of documents on the table one by one. A transporting section transports the document fed from the feeding section to a predetermined illuminating position and, then, discharges the document. A returning section turns over the document transported by transporting means. The returning section returns the document discharged to the top of the stack of documents. Sensors sense a condition in which the documents are fed or transported. A controller performs control in response to output signals of the sensors such that when the stack of documents is to be illuminated a plurality of times, the gate pawl is moved away from the table after the illumination of the last document of the first cycle to start the feed of the second cycle, then the gate pawl is brought into contact with the top of the stack, and then the gate pawl is moved away from the top of the stack to transport the remaining documents to a feed position one by one, dividing the first and second cycles of documents.

Recycling automatic document feeder

A recycling automatic document feeder for a copier which feeds a stack of documents loaded on a document table one by one to a predetermined exposing position, returning the document to the top of the stack after imagewise exposure, and refeeding such documents one by one to the exposing position. A discharge section is movable on and along the table in an intended direction of document feed. The document feeder is capable of returning documents of various sides easily to the top of the document stack which is located at a document feed position on the table.

Growing community of inventors

Nukata, Japan

Fumitaka Hyodou