Bursting apparatus for continuous forms

Abstract

Bursting apparatus for continuous forms having modular guiding, trimming, bursting, and decollating units. A folding forms tray is provided to hold forms to be burst. Paper feeding and guiding is accomplished by the use of laterally adjustable curved, flanged guide means coacting with spring loaded hold-downs. Margin trim cutters and a center slitter are also provided. Forms width and margin trim adjustments are readily accomplished through the use of novel leaf-spring clamping means coacting with transverse guiding means. The bursting unit has fixed high speed rollers and movable low speed rollers with a bursting blade having plural arcuately shaped bursting areas attached thereto. The low speed rollers are mounted on a movable carriage which is adjustably spaced from the fixed high speed rollers by means of two parallel threaded rods. Annular grooves are provided in both the low and high speed rollers to permit straight through wire-form guides to direct the forms continuously through the bursting section and thence to a stacking unit. Further, the low speed and high speed rollers are tilted away from each other to cause a more uniform bursting action and to ensure that the burst forms are ejected downward toward the stacking unit. A compact folding shingling stacker or tray stacker is described which may be readily attached to the fixed high speed roller unit. In addition, decollator, carbon take-up, refold bin, and trim bin units are described.