Apparatus for accurately spacing a sequence of shingled paper sheet

Abstract

A rotary fan bucket type shingling system converts a high speed stream of paper products into a shingled array with the products moving at slower speeds, with the positions of the products defined more accurately than previously attainable with fixed stripping stops. This is achieved by means of movably positioning stripping stops to move into the path of the buckets and engage the paper products about a stripping arc defined by the bucket path with the stop moving at a speed less than that of the papers carried in the buckets. A mechanism is provided for holding the interceptor arm of the movable stripping stops substantially perpendicular to the paper product travel path over the stripping arc. The stripped products are shingled onto a conveyor belt tangentially disposed at the bottom of the bucket path moving at the same speed as that of the stripper stops. Accordingly, the spacing between the successive stripped shingled paper products may be very precisely defined at high speeds with products varying widely in weight and at various high speeds such as expected in newspaper operations.