Eastman-kodak Company

Glenn Francis Hawn

John David DeLorme

A justification apparatus, which receives cut sheets of different widths along a path in an in-track direction of travel, aligns the sheets relative to an in-track axis. The apparatus includes a tray having a planar surface for receiving unconstrained sheets. An edge abutment is movable in opposed directions parallel to the plane of the tray surface so as to contact a side edge of a sheet received on the surface to move the sheet with the edge abutment. The edge abutment is sequentially movable (i) away from the in-track axis to a position spaced from the in-track axis a distance sufficient to allow loading a first sheet of predetermined width onto the tray surface with more than half of the width of the first sheet between the in-track axis and the edge abutment, (ii) toward the in-track axis to a position spaced from the in-track axis by a first predetermined distance so as to effect cross-track directional and skew alignment of the first sheet to the in-track axis, and (iii) away from the in-track axis to a position spaced from the in-track axis by a distance sufficient to allow loading a second cut sheet of predetermined width onto the tray surface with at least half of the width of the second sheet between the in-track axis and the edge abutment, the predetermined width of the second sheet being different from the predetermined width of the first cut sheet, and (iv) toward the in-track axis to a position spaced from the in-track axis by a second predetermined distance so as to effect cross-track and skew alignment of the second sheet to the center line, the second predetermined distance being different from the first predetermined distance by approximately one half the predetermined width of the difference between the width of the first cut sheet and the width of the second sheet.

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Spencerport, NY, United States of America

Glenn Francis Hawn