Apparatus for extraction of ir from illumination for check processor

Abstract

A method of processing documents involving: transporting the documents at high speed unidirectionally and without pause along a prescribed transport path past at least one image-lift site; scanning the entirety of respective document faces at the sites with illumination from a light-source; providing a light-guide along a path between the light-source and the sites; providing an energy-shaping gate, disposed at each of the sites and acting to channel the imaging illumination energy there; and providing a heat-dissipation stage disposed operatively adjacent the light source and acting to extract infra-red energy therefrom and dissipate it so as to shield the sites; this heat-dissipation stage comprising an infra-red extraction unit arranged and adapted to remove a substantial part of the infra-red energy projected along a prescribed beam-path from a high-intensity spectral source; the extraction unit comprising: a selective reflector interrupting the beam path and adapted to divert infra-red energy as an infra-red beam along a second path; and an associated infra-red dissipation unit including multi-blade surfaces; disposed within an enclosure, adapted to receive the infra-red beams and to trap them and convert them to surface heat; these surfaces being arranged in an infra-red trap configuration to receive infra-red energy beams at an input portion and to allow essentially none of them to re-emerge; the reflector being interposed across the beam path and adapted to divert only infra-red energy to the dissipation unit; these blade surfaces comprising opposed sets of parallel blades, disposed obliquely to the direction of the infra-red beams, the blades being arrayed to converge upon the infra-red beams and block them, thus forming a convergent, infra-red trap preventing reflection back of any significant portion of an entering infra-red beam.