JP2934533B2 - Sheet material transport device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a sheet conveying device of an image forming apparatus provided with a sorter for separating and storing sheet materials. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method for temporarily discharging sheet materials using a bin tray of the sorter. And a mechanism for inversion.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art To perform double-sided copying in an image forming apparatus, for example, a double-sided copying machine, first, copying is performed on one side of a sheet material, and then, after the sheet material is turned over, the other side is turned over. Generally, transfer is performed on a surface.

If the reversing operation of the sheet material is to be performed in the main body of the copying machine, the conveying path of the sheet material for reversing occupies a relatively large space, which promotes downsizing of the main body of the apparatus. Because of the great obstacle to the above, a method of reversing the sheet material by temporarily discharging the single-sided copied sheet material to the outside of the apparatus body and drawing the sheet material into the apparatus body again is often used. ing.
According to this method, a so-called dead space only for reversing the sheet material is not formed in the apparatus main body.

When a sorter for separating and discharging a sheet material after copying is mounted on the apparatus main body, the sheet material is temporarily discharged so as to avoid the sorter. This is shown in FIG.

The apparatus body 7 is provided with a pair of paper discharge rollers 15 and 16, and the pair of rollers 15 and 16 rotate in the direction of arrow F to discharge the copied sheet material P in the direction of arrow A. Is done. At this time, the sorter main body 8 adjacent to the apparatus main body 7 has a pair of discharge rollers 11, 12.
The flapper guide 2 is disposed, and the path of the sheet material P is divided into the arrow B direction (in the bin tray 14) and the arrow C direction by switching the position of the flapper guide 2. The bin trays 14 constituting the sorter unit S are arranged in multiple stages.

As shown in FIG. 5, the flapper guide 2 is swingably supported by a shaft 2a, and the base end is connected to a plunger 5 of a solenoid 6 via an operation link 4. Further, a tension spring is interposed between the flapper guide 2 and the operation link 4, and in a natural state where power is not supplied to the solenoid 6, the flapper guide 2 takes a lower position and is located between the flapper guide 2 and the upper guide 1. Sheet material P in bin tray 1
The guide path G leading to No. 4 is opened. At this time, the sheet material P passes through the guide path G, and the conveying roller pair 1 shown in FIG.
The sheet is conveyed by the rollers 1 and 12 and separated from the roller pairs 11 and 12 and discharged onto the bin tray 14. Flapper guide 2
Takes such a position when copying of the sheet material P is completed.

On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 6, when the solenoid 6 is energized, the plunger 5 is shortened and the operation link 4
The flapper guide 2 rises upward via. At this time, the guide path G reaching the bin tray 14 is closed, and the sheet material P is guided downward (in the direction of arrow C) following the flapper guide 2. The rear end of the sheet material P is shown in FIG.
, Between the pair of paper discharge rollers 15 and 16 on the side of the apparatus body 7,
The first half is suspended with the first half suspended outside the apparatus body 7. This is the so-called temporary sheet discharging state of the sheet material P. Thereafter, the sheet material P is conveyed in the direction of the arrow D by reversing the pair of paper discharge rollers 15 and 16 in the direction of the arrow R, is again carried into the apparatus main body 7, and is then copied on the remaining surface.

[0008]

However, according to the prior art, the sheet material P collides with the flapper guide 2 and is forced to change its course. Is sandwiched between the pair of paper discharge rollers 15 and 16, and the front half thereof hangs down by its own weight, so that the sheet material P is easily damaged, and the sandwiched portion tends to be unnaturally curved. When such a sheet material P is re-fed to the apparatus main body 7, there is a risk that the sheet material P may be further damaged or a paper jam may occur.

In view of the above, according to the present invention, when the sheet material is temporarily discharged, the first half thereof is supported and accommodated on a bin tray and the sheet material is temporarily discharged in a planar manner, thereby causing damage to the sheet material and subsequent jamming. It is an object of the present invention to provide a sheet conveying apparatus which eliminates the occurrence of the sheet.

[0010]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has a discharge roller disposed on an apparatus main body side of an image forming apparatus having a sorter unit, and a discharge roller disposed inside the sorter unit. A sheet path that is disposed in the sheet path and guides the sheet material discharged from the sheet discharge roller to a bin tray of the sorter unit; and a transfer roller that is disposed in the guide path. Control for stopping the transport roller in the course of transporting the sheet material onto the bin tray of the sorter unit by the transport roller, and rotating the discharge roller in reverse to re-feed the sheet material into the apparatus main body. A device is provided.

[0011] Further, a roller contact / separation mechanism for moving at least one of the transport rollers and releasing a nip portion of the transport roller pair is provided.

Further, when the paper discharge roller rotates in reverse, the transport roller is rotated in reverse. In addition, the driving force of the transport roller is turned off when the paper discharge roller rotates in the reverse direction.

[0013]

According to the above construction, the conveying means connected to the control device can convey the sheet material from the apparatus main body to the bin tray, stop the sheet material, and further convey the sheet material in the reverse direction. Can be inverted.

In this case, a pair of paper discharge rollers is used as a conveying means,
A pair of conveyance rollers is provided, and the sheet discharge roller pair is rotated forward to convey the sheet material to the bin tray.Then, the sheet discharge roller pair is stopped. Can be fed.

According to such a reversing method, since the whole is supported almost flat by the paper discharge roller pair, the transport roller pair, and the bin tray, there is no possibility of damage or subsequent jamming.

Further, the above-mentioned members such as the discharge roller pair, the conveyance roller pair, and the bin tray are not provided additionally for temporarily discharging the sheet material, but are normally provided for those having a sorter unit. Since there is no need to dispose special members such as a flapper guide, an operation link, and a solenoid as in the conventional example shown in FIG. 5, the overall configuration is simplified and the operation reliability is reduced. It is possible to make the configuration highly reliable.

When the roller contacting / separating mechanism shown in FIGS. 2 and 3 is additionally mounted, the overall configuration cannot be simplified. Can be widened, so that the sheet material can be easily entered into the bin tray and pulled out from the bin tray when the sheet material is temporarily discharged. According to this, a series of operations for temporarily discharging the sheet material can be smoothly performed, and damage to the sheet material is further reduced.

[0018]

[0019]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

As shown in FIG. 1, a sheet conveying apparatus according to the present invention includes an apparatus body 7 of an image forming apparatus and an apparatus body 7.
And a discharge roller pair 15, 16, a guide path G, a transport roller pair 11,
12, and the control device M is a main component. The paper discharge roller pairs 15 and 16 are rotatably disposed on the outermost side of the apparatus main body 7 while being pressed against each other. The guide path G is formed by the upper guide 1 and the lower guide 13 of the sorter main body 8, has a large opening on the upstream side facing the pair of paper discharge rollers 15, 16, and is narrowed down on the downstream side.
Inclined slightly upwards.

At the most downstream of the guide path G, a pair of conveying rollers 11 and 12 which are pressed against each other to form a nip portion N
Is arranged. A sorter unit S having a number of bin trays 14 is arranged downstream of the pair of transport rollers 11 and 12. The sorter main body 8 and the sorter unit S are provided with an elevating mechanism and an opening / closing mechanism (not shown) for moving the bin tray 14 up and down and for transporting the roller pair 1.
It is assumed that the bin trays 14 corresponding to 1 and 12 are greatly opened. Conveying roller pair 11, 12 and paper discharge roller 1
The control device M is connected to the rollers 5, 16, and the control device M rotates the rollers 11, 12, 15, 16 forward (in the direction of arrow F) based on an inversion signal or the like from the device body 7 side. ), Reverse rotation (in the direction of arrow R), and stop operation.

Next, the operation of the above embodiment will be described.

First, when the sheet material P on which the image formation is completed is discharged and stored on the bin tray 14, that is, it is not necessary to re-feed the sheet material P to the apparatus main body 7, and therefore,
A case where temporary paper discharge is unnecessary will be described.

The sheet material P on which copying has been completed is discharged from the apparatus body 7 in the direction A by the power of a driving device (not shown) by the conveying force of the paper discharge rollers 15 and 16, and the sorter body 8 installed therebefore. Is guided in the guide path G, and is sent in the direction B. Beyond that, a pair of transport rollers 11, which also rotate by receiving rotational force from a driving device (not shown),
12 and a nip portion N between the roller pair 11 and 12
, The sheet material P is transferred to the roller pair 11, 1
2 receives the transfer force. In this case, the conveying force of the paper discharge roller pair 15, 16 of the apparatus main body 7 is F1, and the conveying speed is S1.
The transport force of the transport roller pair 11 and 12 in the sorter main body 8 is set to F2, and the transport speed is set to S2 so that the respective relationships are F1> F2 and S1 <S2. That is, the copied sheet material P that has entered the sorter body 8 is applied to the discharge roller pairs 15 and 16 of the apparatus body 7.
When the sheet material P is nipped by both the pair of conveying rollers 11 and 12 in the sorter body 8, the speed of the sheet material P is
, And the transfer roller 1 in the sorter body 8
When the driving force of the conveying roller pairs 11 and 12 in the sorter main body 8 is weak, the conveying roller pairs 11 and 12 do not idle and have one strong conveying force. The sheet material P discharged is rotated in accordance with the sheet discharging speed of the apparatus main body 7 having the above. In this case, in order to keep the image forming state of the sheet material P favorable, the latter can provide a good result because there is basically no slippage between the conveying roller pairs 11, 12 and the sheet material P. When the inquiry between the apparatus main body 7 and the sorter main body 8 is completed, and the sheet material P passes through the paper discharge roller pairs 15 and 16 of the apparatus main body 7, the sheet material P is then turned at the speed S2 of the transport roller pairs 11 and 12 of the sorter main body 8. Are conveyed and discharged respectively to bin trays 14 provided in the sorter main body 8, and the sheets P are aligned and stored with their rear ends aligned by their inclination.

Next, the details of the case where the sheet material P after one-side copying in the case of double-side copying is temporarily discharged for reversing outside the machine will be described.

The sheet material P discharged from the apparatus main body 7 is guided by a guide path G in the sorter main body 8 and fed while receiving a tensile force. Thereafter, a signal for stopping the rotation of the conveying roller pairs 11 and 12 is sent from the apparatus main body 7 to the sorter body 8 for reversal, and the rotation of the paper discharge roller pairs 15 and 16 in the apparatus main body 7 is reversed, so that the paper discharging direction has been changed. The sheet material P sent in (arrow B) is sent in the collection direction (arrow D). Also at this time, F1> F2 is satisfied (S1 and S2 are S1> S2 because the driving force of S2 is cut off), and the discharge roller pair 15 and 16 of the apparatus main body 7 causes the inside of the apparatus main body 7 to be inside. Drawn into At this time, the sheet material P is
The driving device (motor) sandwiched between the motors 1 and 12 and whose power source is turned off by the fact that F2 is alive is set to a torque so as to perform reverse rotation corresponding to S1, and the sheet material P
Of the sheet material P can be prevented, and good copying can be maintained.

Although FIG. 1 has been described in connection with the case where a temporary sheet is ejected by using a middle tray of a multi-stage bin tray 14, this function can be used even in the uppermost bin position without the upper bin due to the system. Can be achieved similarly.

When the temporarily discharged sheet material P receives a reversal signal from the apparatus main body 7, the rotation direction of the conveying roller pairs 11 and 12 in the sorter main body 8 is controlled to be reversed, whereby the apparatus main body 7 is controlled. Paper inquiries due to the respective conveying forces of the paper discharge roller pairs 15 and 16 and the transport roller pairs 11 and 12 in the sorter body 8 can be eliminated. At the time of inversion F
1> F2, but the transport speed is S1 (reverse) = S2
(Reversal) is desirable, but even if S1 is slightly faster, there is no particular problem in printing performance.

FIGS. 2 and 3 show another embodiment, in which the nip of the pair of conveying rollers 11 and 12 in the sorter main body 8 when the temporarily discharged sheet material P receives an inversion signal from the main body 7 of the apparatus. A method for eliminating the conveying force in the sorter body 8 by performing control to release the part N will be described. The roller 11 is supported by a leaf spring 102 and can swing about a fulcrum 103. The leaf spring 102 is engaged with a lever 100, and the lever 100 is connected to a solenoid 101. When the solenoid 101 is turned on, the roller 11 is separated from the roller 12 as shown in FIG. In this embodiment, the above-described control is performed by turning on the solenoid 101 in response to an inversion signal from the apparatus main body and releasing the nip N between the rollers 11 and 12.

[0030]

As described above, according to the present invention,
When temporarily discharging the sheet material to reverse the sheet material, the sheet material can be held substantially flat by using the bin tray of the sorter, so that the sheet material may be damaged or the sheet material may be damaged. It is possible to prevent the sheet material from being jammed due to damage or bending.

Further, when performing the temporary sheet discharging operation of the sheet material by controlling the rotation stop of the sheet discharging roller and the conveying roller by the control device, a special device and member for the temporary sheet discharging are required. Not so, simplifying the whole device,
Operation reliability can be improved.

Further, when the nip portion of the transport roller is separated by the roller contact / separation mechanism, the sheet material can smoothly enter and exit the bin tray.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory sectional view showing a sheet material conveying device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the operation of a roller contact / separation mechanism.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating the operation of a roller contact / separation mechanism.

FIG. 4 is a cross-sectional explanatory view showing a conventional example.

FIG. 5 is an operation explanatory diagram of a conventional example.

FIG. 6 is an operation explanatory diagram of a conventional example.

[Explanation of symbols]

 7 Apparatus body 11, 12 Conveyance roller pair 14 Bin tray 15, 16 Discharge roller pair G Guide path K Roller contact / separation mechanism M Control unit N Nip section P Sheet material S Sorter unit

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuing on the front page (72) Inventor Tsutomu Katsumata 46, Nogoshi, Okumachi, Ikunomiya-shi, Aichi Prefecture Inside Omron Ichinomiya Co., Ltd. (72) Inventor Noriyoshi Ueda 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ota-ku, Tokyo (56) References JP-A-61-130129 (JP, A) JP-A-1-203168 (JP, A) (58) Fields investigated (Int. Cl. ⁶ , DB name) B65H 39 / 11 B65H 29/58

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] A sheet discharge roller disposed on an apparatus main body side of an image forming apparatus having a sorter unit; and a sheet material disposed in the sorter unit and discharged from the discharge roller by the sorter unit. In a sheet material conveyance device including a guide path leading to a bin tray and a conveyance roller disposed on the guide path, the sheet material is conveyed onto the bin tray of the sorter unit by the discharge roller and the conveyance roller. A sheet conveying device, comprising: a control device for stopping the conveying roller, reversing the sheet discharging roller, and re-feeding the sheet material into the apparatus main body. 2. The sheet conveying apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a roller contact / separation mechanism configured to move at least one of the conveying rollers to release a nip portion of the pair of conveying rollers. 3. The sheet conveying apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the conveying roller is rotated reversely when the discharge roller is rotated reversely. 4. The sheet conveying apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the driving force of the conveying roller is turned off when the discharge roller rotates in the reverse direction.