Fargo Electronics, Inc.

Thomas J Reynolds-Kotz

Brent D Lien

John P Skoglund

Darren W Haas

Gary M Klinefelter

Matthew K Dunham

Robert E Francis

Gary B Fulmer

A card feed drive roller is provided with a drive section that is a soft elastomeric-material which has a coefficient of friction adequate to break away lower cards in a substantial stack of cards and has at least one support section that is of harder material that will limit the amount of compression of the drive section under weight of the card stack. The limitation of the compression of the drive section insures that when an outlet opening is adjusted it will be high enough so one card will always fit through the outlet opening, and multiple cards will not be fed through the opening.

Card feed roller for printer

A card feeder for a card printer provides a stack of cards at an input end of the printer. The cards are supported on a pair of rollers that are driven at differential speeds and through one-way clutches so that a card being fed from the stack will pass through an outlet opening and can be accelerated by further drives. The outlet opening is controlled as to size by a slidable gate that permits changing the thickness of the opening to permit use of different thickness cards in the hopper. The feeder includes cleaning rollers that are formed as a module that can be inserted and replaced, and also an encoding station where the card can be encoded such as for a magnetic strip, or for non contact radio frequency or other smart card chips contained on the card being processed prior to the printing operation.

Input hopper and encoding station for card printer

A printer for printing information on images on a substrate such as an identification card in multiple colors has an intermediate transfer film or web on which a reverse image is printed. The printer has a lamination station where the image is transferred to a substrate, such as an identification card. The intermediate transfer film or web is moved back and forth, the intermediate transfer film or web has slack occurring in it between the printing station and the lamination station. The slack is taken up with spring loaded rollers to permit operation of the printer head and the lamination station at the same time. Additionally, the printer is made into modules that are movable for easy access to interior components and to expose film or web paths that permits installing both the print film or web and the intermediate transfer film or web without threading it through enclosed openings.

Printer having an intermediate transfer film

Growing community of inventors

Burnsville, MN, United States of America

Thomas J Reynolds-Kotz