The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 19, 1998
Filed:
Oct. 24, 1996
Mita Industrial Company, Ltd., Osaka, JP;
Abstract
A recirculating document feeder for use with an image forming machine having a transparent platen. This recirculating document feeder includes a document support disposed above the transparent platen and adapted to have a stack of documents placed thereon, with a selected side of each document facing down; a feed-out path extending from one end of the document support; a first switchback path having an upstream end connected to the downstream end of the feed-out path; a send-in path extending from its upstream end, which is connected to the upstream end of the first switchback path, to one end of the transparent platen; a send-out path extending from the other end of the transparent platen; a second switchback path having an upstream end connected to the downstream end of the send-out path; and a return path extending from its upstream end, which is connected to the upstream end of the second switchback path, to the other end of the document support. The bottom-most document of the document stack placed on the document support is fed out to the feed-out path, fed to the first switchback path through the feed-out path, and then sent onto the transparent platen through the send-in path in a reversed direction of feeding. Then, the document is fed from the transparent platen to the second switchback path through the send-out path, and then returned onto the document stack on the document support through the return path after the direction of its feeding is reversed again.