Eastman-kodak Company

Matthew DiPietro

Thomas J Kausch

Vincent B Dethier

Hans-Peter Baumeister

Daniel C Maslanka

William K Hickok

Michael L Koelsch

Lawrence J Bernstein

Richard K Neace

William Thomas Hochreiter

Raymond G Hauss

William B Wilson

John De Point, Jr

James R Louk

A supply magazine for use in an apparatus for removing individual film that has been placed within a light-tight pouch having a leader secured to the leading edge. The magazine has a base which receives and retains a stack of sheet film within the light-tight pouch, and a cover secured to the base which can be rotated between a closed position and an open position. A take-up spindle is rotatably secured within the base for winding of the pouch thereon. The improvement comprises a lever arm for biasing the leader toward the spindle which cooperates with hook provided on the spindle when the cover is in the closed position. The lever arm includes a clamp pad which has a configuration which forms a resistive wall section in the leader when the magazine is in the closed position such that when the spindle is rotated, the hooks will engage the leader at the resistive wall section allowing the pouch to be wound around the spindle.

Magazine for a stack of film sheets

A magazine has a space for receiving a package containing a stack of film sheets enclosed within a bag. The bag is removable from the stack of sheets while the package is within the magazine by exerting a pulling force on the bag. Means are provided within the magazine for flexing the stack of film sheets in response to pulling of the bag from the stack, thus loosening adjacent sheets in the film stack that may be stuck together and facilitating removal of the sheets seriatim.

Film supply magazine

A package for a stack of film sheets has a pouch that is sealed around the stack of sheets and a leader that is secured to the pouch and engageable with a spindle in a magazine so that rotation of the spindle can pull the pouch from around the stack of sheets. The pouch and leader are formed of different polyolefin materials with the pouch comprising a material having a low coefficient of friction to enable the pouch to be easily pulled around the stack of sheets while the leader comprises a material having a high coefficient of friction to facilitate engagement with the spindle and pulling the pouch uniformly.

Film package having a pouch and leader with different coefficients of

A carrier is provided for a package containing a stack of film sheets enclosed by a bag. The carrier has a first wall positionable on one side of the stack of sheets and a second wall positionable on the opposite side of the stack of sheets. The carrier has an edge wall connected to the first wall and the second wall. The edge wall has an opening at the center portion thereof, and two spaced end portions separated by the opening. The carrier allows the stack of film sheets and the carrier to flex in the area of the opening in the carrier edge wall to reduce the tendency of the sheets to stick together and thereby improve reliability of feeding of the sheets seriatim from the stack.

Carrier for a film package

A light lock is formed by a channel with spaced walls, with the channel being open at one side. A light absorbing material is positioned in the channel and has bristles projecting toward the opening. A flange projects through the opening toward the material but is spaced from the bristles. The channel can be formed on one portion of a magazine, cassette or the like, for light tight materials such as photographic film, and the flange can be formed on another portion of such a magazine or cassette.

Light lock

A supply magazine receives a package having a stack of film sheets within a light-tight bag. When the magazine is closed, a the bag is driven from the magazine so that the sheets can be removed for exposure and development. The bag is removed at the rear end of the magazine and fed toward the front of the magazine so that it is accessible to the operator and to avoid having the bag fall into an associated printer/processor and out of the reach of the operator.

A carrier for a package containing a stack of sheets of x-ray film has a first wall located along one side of the stack of sheets and a second wall located along the opposite side of the stack of sheets. The dimensions of the walls relative to the film sheets is such that the first wall extends less than the full width of the sheets and the second wall extends less than the full length of the sheets. This enables a sheet removing device to engage and remove a sheet from either side of the stack of sheets. The package can be loaded in either of two kinds of equipment which require the package to be oriented in different ways when sheets are to be fed from the stack.

Carrier for film package

A package has a light tight pouch that encloses a stack of rectangular sheets of film. The package can be loaded in either of two different kinds of equipment which have means for removing the pouch from the film stack so that the sheets can be fed seriatim from the stack. One kind of equipment requires the package to be oriented so that the pouch can be removed from a narrow side of the package while the second kind of equipment requires the package to be loaded therein so that the pouch can be removed from a long side of the stack of film. The pouch has flaps extending from one long side and one narrow side of the package, and the flaps are engageable by the pouch removing mechanism in the different kinds of equipment.

Universal package for use in different kinds of equipment

A magazine receives a package having a stack of film sheets, such as x-ray film sheets, enclosed within a light-tight flexible bag. When the bag is positioned within the magazine and the magazine closed, the bag is cut and then removed from the magazine through is lightlock. A pair of stripper bars in the magazine are located between the lightlock and the stack of film sheets in the bag. The bars form a curved slot that enables the bag to be withdrawn through the slot while the bars block movement of the film sheets through the slot with the bag.

Processing apparatus for photographic film, particularly intraoral xray film, in which the various processing stations are positioned in a circle about a central rotatable column. The column has an external spiral groove in which rides a pin carried by, and extending into the bore of, a hub which fits around the column. Rotation of the column moves the hub up or down, depending upon the direction of rotation. The hub carries a plurality of arms equal in number to the number of stations, seven in the apparatus disclosed. Each arm has a magnet for attaching a novel film holder which is detachable at the unloading station. After loading a film holder with film to be processed, the holder is loaded into the machine through a spring-pressed loading door onto a loading platform which moves the film holder upwardly to engage it with one of the arms when the door is closed. Raising, rotation and lowering of the hub, arms and film holders is controlled by rotation of the column and proper arm positioning is assured by a novel escapement mechanism. The apparatus provides operation from loading to unloading with a minimum of human intervention, with high consistency of operation, and with treatment for equal time intervals in the developing, fixing, washing, liquid removal and spin drying stations.

Processing apparatus

A skip-field guard-bandless video tape recorder records and plays back adjacent tracks on a video tape with two closely adjacent heads of opposing head gap azimuth angles (to suppress cross-talk), only during alternate (odd) half-rotations of the head drum. Unavoidable cross-talk of synchronization pulses from adjacent tracks does not create visible interference or timing errors during playback by virtue of a special offset angle .theta..sub.1, between the adjacent recording heads, proportional to the linear offset distance between adjacent tracks. During playback, skipped fields are 'filled-in' by a repetition of each recorded field through a second (duplicate) pair of closely adjacent heads of opposing azimuth positioned to retrace the recorded tracks during the other alternate (even) half-rotations of the head drum. An offset angle .theta..sub.2 between the two head pairs (i.e., between opposing heads of like azimuth) corresponds to a half horizontal video line and provides for precise self-interlacing of the repeated fields.

Zero guard-band skip-field video cassette recorder

A film video player/printer allows an operator to display a video image of a photographic film in a normal orientation while magnifying and composing the magnified image according to a desired format (vertical or horizontal) portrayed by the display. Reticle-generating circuitry selectively rotates a rectangular reticle centered on the display, the reticle portraying the border and thereby the format of a print to be made. A turntable serves for selectively rotating the film about an optical centerline of the film video player/printer, to provide for the display of the film image in the normal viewing orientation and to provide for a print corresponding to the image and format displayed. With the film being rotated about the optical centerline and with the aspect ratio of a vertical reticle being the reciprocal of the aspect ratio of a horizontal reticle, an optical print is made without any need to compose or magnify the image to compensate for any rotation of the film for printing.

Growing community of inventors

Webster, NY, United States of America

Matthew DiPietro