Konica Corporation

Tadashi Uematsu

Yasushi Yamada

Hiroyuki Hara

Tetsuo Hirata

Kohji Yoshie

Shigeo Inaba

An automatic document feeder includes a document stacker for holding documents, a first conveyer for feeding the documents one sheet by one sheet to a platen glass for reading an image on a first side of the conveyed document, a second conveyor for conveying the conveyed document so that the conveyed document is turned over and conveyed to the platen glass again to read an image on the second side, and a discharger for discharging the conveyed document from the platen glass and returning the conveyed document to the document stacker. A third conveyer, located over the platen glass, conveys the conveyed document from at least one of the first conveyor and the second conveyer to the platen glass and conveys the conveyed document from the platen glass to at least one of the first conveyer, the second conveyer, and the discharger. A controller controls the movement of the conveyed document by the first, second, and third conveyers and the discharger, and a next conveyed document following the conveyed document is set to a waiting position on the platen glass when a second circulation is executed by the controller following a first circulation. The next conveyed document is then conveyed to the platen glass through the second conveyer after the second side of the conveyed document is read.

Automatic document feeder

A sheet feeding apparatus includes an endless belt which is postioned to be adjacent to a rear part of a sheet stand on which trailing edges of a pile of sheets are loaded. The endless belt includes a holding member to hold a leading edge of a sheet that is being returned to the sheet stand so that the endless belt conveys the sheet together with the holding member and inserts the sheet being returned to the sheet stand under the pile of sheets. A single stopper is provided on the sheet stand to align the sheets of the pile as well as the sheets inserted under the pile.

An automatic document conveying device has a stack tray on which a plurality of documents are stacked; a feeder by which the documents stacked on the stack tray are separated and fed one by one; at least one pair of conveying rollers provided downstream of the feeder; a reading position for reading document information from said separated documents positioned downstream of the at least one pair of conveying rollers; a conveyor provided opposite to the reader for conveying separated documents to the reading position; a discharger positioned downstream of said reading position for discharging documents after said conveyor conveys the documents to the reading position, a conveyance path on which a plurality of documents are sequentially located between the feeder and the reading position; the conveyance path having predetermined stand-by positions provided on the conveyance path at which documents, subsequent to a document positioned at the reading position are stopped; a document detector provided between the at least one pair of conveying rollers and the conveyor; an encoder which generates a pulse signal corresponding to a rotation of the conveyor; and pulse counter for counting the encoding pulses. A document conveyance to the reading position by the conveyor is controlled based on a number of pulses counted by the pulse counters on the basis of a detection timing by the document detector.

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Oizumi, Japan

Tadashi Uematsu