Xerox Corporation

Randolph Cruz

Thomas Acquaviva

David G Anderson

Paul N Richards

John H Looney

Christian O Abreu

David M Attridge

William Brant

A pretransfer sheet feeding device for an electrophotographic printing machine that minimizes impact with and delivers a sheet to a photoreceptor at a desired tangential position. The sheet feeding device includes a selectively engageable drive nip and a biased baffle member which forms a buckle chamber. There is further a plurality of rollers located so as to provide substantially frictionless directional guidance to the sheet while also inducing a predetermined bend to the sheet so as to deliver the sheet to the photoreceptor. The pretransfer rollers are also moveable so that the angle of approach of a sheet can be adjusted based on sheet weight or other characteristics. Once the sheet is tacked to the photoreceptor in the transfer zone, the disengageable drive nip is released and the sheet is controlled by the photoreceptor so that speed mismatch is not a problem.

Sheet pre-transfer device

A ball-on-belt transport includes a belt with a steel ball positioned on top of the belt and a magnet on the back side of the belt with the ball forming a nip with the belt to provide necessary normal force against a conveyed sheet and thereby allowing easy lateral pulling of sheets in clearing jams from the nip. Alternatively, a steel ball is retained while in contact with a belt to apply a normal force to a sheet on the belt equal to the weight of the steel ball. The ball is encased in a housing that is surrounded by a solenoid coil such that when current is applied to the coil, it acts as a solenoid and raises the ball off the belt surface and thus releases the nip pressure.

Magnetic ball-on-belt transport

A device for adding controlled amounts of moisture to one or both sides of a copy sheet. The device includes a pair of water jets, a reservoir for storing a quantity of liquid and connected to the water jet, a pair of generally cylindrical, pressure rolls, each having an outer cylindrical surface with the rolls being aligned with respect to one another along their axes so as to define a nip between the outer cylindrical surfaces, and a controller for controlling application of water from the water jets to selected portions of each sheet passing thereunder before each sheet enters the nip formed between the outer cylindrical surfaces. Alternatively, the water jets could apply the liquid to the cylindrical surfaces of the pressure rolls.

Sheet moisture replacement system using water jet technology

A sheet stacking and registration system particularly suited for high speed sequentially stacking of the flimsy printed sheets output of a high speed reproduction apparatus in a sheet stacking area, with a stacking registration position; with a vacuum belt sheet transport system acquiring only a limited lead edge area of the sheets and transporting them over the stacking area with non-slip sheet feeding towards the registration position; and an integral system peeling the lead edges of the sheets off of the vacuum transport and guiding them downwardly and towards the lead edge registration position while reducing but partially maintaining the sheet's vacuum acquisition, and applying a normal force, preferably with a roller pressing down the lead edges of the peeled off sheet against the previously stacked sheets adjacent the registration position, to frictionally slow the sheet as it approaches the registration position, and also holding down the sheet after it reaches the stacking position. The sheet transport may have spaced belt flights with spaced patterns of vacuum apertures spaced between substantially unapertured areas along the belts, and a synchronized belt drive to synchronously engage the lead edge areas of the incoming sheets. An upstream natural arcuate inversion path with a side registration system may be integrated therewith.

Growing community of inventors

Palm Bay, FL, United States of America

Randolph Cruz