This patent application is based on and claims priority pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 119(a) to Japanese Patent Application No. 2018-015559, filed on Jan. 31, 2018, in the Japan Patent Office, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
Aspects of the present disclosure relate to a sheet stacker, an image forming apparatus, and an image system.
In an image forming apparatus such as a copier, a printer, or a digital multifunction peripheral (MFP), there is known a sheet stacker that ejects and stacks a sheet carrying an image while blowing air to the sheet.
In an aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided a sheet stacker that includes a sheet ejector, a sheet stack portion, and a plurality of air blowers. The sheet ejector ejects a sheet. The sheet stack portion stacks the sheet ejected by the sheet ejector. The plurality of air blowers blows air from a plurality of blow ports toward the sheet ejected from the sheet ejector. Each of the plurality of air blowers includes an air generator, an air guide, a first blow portion, a second blow portion, and a switcher. The air generator generates the air. The air guide guides the air to each of the plurality of blow ports. The first blow portion blows the air toward the sheet. The second blow portion blows the air in a direction different from a direction in which the first blow portion blows the air. The switcher performs switching so that the air guide guides the air to one of the first blow portion and the second blow portion.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided an image forming apparatus that includes the sheet stacker.
In still another aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided an image system that includes an image forming apparatus and the sheet stacker.
The aforementioned and other aspects, features, and advantages of the present disclosure would be better understood by reference to the following detailed description when considered in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The accompanying drawings are intended to depict embodiments of the present disclosure and should not be interpreted to limit the scope thereof. The accompanying drawings are not to be considered as drawn to scale unless explicitly noted.
In describing embodiments illustrated in the drawings, specific terminology is employed for the sake of clarity. However, the disclosure of this patent specification is not intended to be limited to the specific terminology so selected and it is to be understood that each specific element includes all technical equivalents that operate in a similar manner and achieve similar results.
Although the embodiments are described with technical limitations with reference to the attached drawings, such description is not intended to limit the scope of the disclosure and all of the components or elements described in the embodiments of this disclosure are not necessarily indispensable.
Referring now to the drawings, embodiments of the present disclosure are described below. In the drawings for explaining the following embodiments, the same reference codes are allocated to elements (members or components) having the same function or shape and redundant descriptions thereof are omitted below.
Hereinafter, a sheet stacker, an image forming apparatus, and an image system according to embodiments of the present disclosure will be described with reference to the drawings. Since the embodiments described below are preferred embodiments of the present disclosure, and thus include various technically preferable limitations. However, the scope of the present disclosure is not unduly limited by the following description, and not all of the configurations described in the present embodiment are indispensable constituent features of embodiments of the present disclosure.
The stacker 100 has a plurality of operation modes for ejecting, via a predetermined path, the sheets S introduced into the stacker 100. For example, the stacker 100 can select an operation mode from among a proof eject mode, a straight eject mode, a shift eject mode, and the like.
The proof eject mode is an operation mode in which the sheet S is guided to a proof tray 101 through a sheet conveyance path L1 and stacked. The straight eject mode is an operation mode in which the sheet S is guided to another apparatus provided at a subsequent stage of the stacker 100 through a sheet conveyance path L2. The shift eject mode is an operation mode in which the sheet S is ejected to a shift tray 102 through a sheet conveyance path L3 and the ejected sheet S is stacked. In the shift eject mode, the sheets S can be shifted to different positions on the upper surface of the shift tray 102 and be stacked.
The shift tray 102 is mounted on ascendable/descendable supporting members 103a and 103b (collectively referred to as supporting members 103 unless distinguished). Four corners of the supporting members 103 are suspended by a total of four timing belts 104, and the individual timing belts 104 are wound around corresponding four timing pulleys 105. One of the timing pulleys 105 is linked by a gear train 107 including a worm gear 106 and a plurality of gears and is synchronously rotated by a driving force of a tray raising/lowering motor 108.
The timing pulley 105 rotates with the rotation of the tray raising/lowering motor 108 to allow the supporting members 103 to ascend/descend together with the shift tray 102. The worm gear 106 is interposed in a power transmission system that transmits the power from the tray raising/lowering motor 108, enabling the shift tray 102 to be maintained at a constant position. When the supporting members 103 descend to a lowermost position, the shift tray 102 can be mounted on a carriage 109 to enable exporting the shift tray 102 together with the sheets S stacked on the shift tray 102, by using the carriage 109.
In the middle of the sheet conveyance path L3, a paddle 110 rotating in conjunction with an ejection roller 111 is disposed. The paddle 110 performs operation of hitting a rear end portion of the sheet S ejected to the shift tray 102 and pressing the sheet S downward.
The sheet S stacked on the shift tray 102 uses its thickness to act to push up a filler 112. Based on the movement of the filler 112, an optical sheet surface sensor S3 is configured to be able to detect the stack height (loading amount) of the sheets S in the shift tray 102. This configuration is used to control to operate the tray raising/lowering motor 108 to lower the shift tray 102 when the sheet surface sensor S3 is ON, and to stop operation of the tray raising/lowering motor 108 (suppressing lowering) when the sheet surface sensor S3 is OFF. Accordingly, the stacker 100 is configured to lower the shift tray 102 by a predetermined distance at a time when the sheet surface sensor S3 is turned on by a certain amount of sheets S being stacked on the shift tray 102.
A sheet conveyance passage sensor S1 to detect passage of the sheet S is provided at an entry port of the sheet to the stacker 100. An entrance roller 114 is provided at the entry port of the sheet S. The entrance roller 114 drives to transport the sheet S ejected in the direction of arrow A from an external apparatus (for example, a copier or the like) into the stacker 100.
In the middle of the sheet conveyance path L3, a sheet conveyance passage sensor S2 to detect the passage of the imported sheet S is disposed. The ejection roller 111 and a driven roller 113 are disposed at the rear stage of the sheet conveyance passage sensor S2 (downstream in the conveyance direction of the sheet S). The driven roller 113 biased by a spring is pressed against the ejection roller 111. The sheet S is nipped between the ejection roller 111 and the driven roller 113.
The sheet S ejected onto the shift tray 102 undergoes alignment in a sheet width direction of the sheet S by a jogger 210 and a sub-jogger 220 constituting a alignment mechanism to align the stacking positions of the sheets S. The sheet conveyance direction of the sheet S undergoes alignment by the leading end stopper 230.
An operation unit 250 is disposed on the outer surface of the upper portion of the stacker 100. The operation unit 250 is a user interface of the stacker 100 and functions as an operation display unit that displays a processing state. The operation unit 250 also functions as an operation instruction unit that gives instructions of user's operation (descending operation, for example) of a tray (the shift tray 102, for example) after image processing.
Next, a shift conveyance mechanism 50 of the stacker 100 will be described with reference to
The ejection roller 111 and the driven roller 113 are joined to each of a holder 51 and a holder 52 provided as a pair to move in the direction of arrow G1 and the direction of arrow G2, and joined to two shafts, namely a shaft 53 and a shaft 54 joining the holders 51 and 52.
The ejection roller 111 is rotated by a stepping motor 55 regardless of the moving position. A driven gear 56 attached to the ejection roller 111 meshes with a driving gear 60 rotated by the stepping motor 55 via a gear 57, a gear 58, and a belt 59. The driven gear 56 and the driving gear 60 mesh with each other regardless of the moving position (shift direction) of the ejection roller 111. The holder 51 includes a rack gear 61. The rack gear 61 is joined to a pulse motor 63 via a pinion gear 62.
The stopper 71 is attached to a slider 72, and the slider 72 is slidably guided by a shaft 73 extending in the direction of arrow H1 as illustrated in
The slider 72 includes a shielding plate 78. When the stopper 71 moves to the home position, the shielding plate 78 is detected by an optical home position sensor S5.
Next, a main jogger mechanism 200 will be described with reference to
The main jogger mechanism 200 includes a stepping motor 201 and a stepping motor 202 that control the movement of the jogger 210 in a width direction. The “width direction” represents a direction orthogonal to an ejection direction of the sheet S and parallel to the surface of the sheet S. The main jogger mechanism 200 further includes a stepping motor 203 that controls the movement of the jogger 210 in the vertical direction. The “vertical direction” represents a direction orthogonal to the width direction and orthogonal to the surface of the sheet S.
The main jogger mechanism 200 further includes a gear 204 meshed with the gear of the stepping motor 203, a rotation shaft 205 to which the gear 204 is attached, a drive shaft 206 parallel to the rotation shaft 205, and a slider 207F and a slider 207R joined to the drive shaft 206.
As illustrated in
Next, the shape or the like of the jogger 210 will be described in detail. As illustrated in
With the aligning portion 211F and the aligning portion 211R having their opposing surfaces formed as flat surfaces orthogonal to the shift direction G in this manner, it is possible to move the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R in the shift direction G to reliably bring the aligning portion 211F and the aligning portion 211R into contact with or separate them from the end surface of the sheet S stacked in the shift tray 102 in the width direction. Such a configuration enables matching and alignment of the width direction of the sheet bundle stacked on the shift tray 102.
When guiding the sheet S ejected from the ejection roller 111 (refer to
Returning to
Each of the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R stands by at a receiving position with a predetermined opposing interval at the timing of receiving the sheet S ejected from the ejection roller 111. Every time the sheet S is ejected from the ejection roller 111 and stacked on the shift tray 102, the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R perform operation of narrowing the opposing interval from the receiving position, and after moving to the end surface position of the sheet S, they perform operation of expanding the opposing interval and then return to the receiving positions. This series of aligning operation enables alignment of the end surfaces of the sheet S in the width direction.
The ejection roller 111 repeats shift operation (10 mm shift) in the direction of arrow G1 for each of the sheets S and finishes ejecting a predetermined number of sheets constituting the preceding sheet bundle, and then performs 10 mm shift operation in the direction of arrow G2 to stack the succeeding sheet bundle. At the time of switching the shift direction, the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R move to a retraction rotational position. This movement establishes an aligning member retraction state, and the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R perform the shift operation in this retraction state.
For example, in a case where the ejection roller 111 shifts to the main jogger 210F side, the main jogger 210R is disposed at a position where it abuts on the rear side and on the front “part” (sheet bundle) of the ejected sheet stacked on the shift tray 102. The other main jogger 210F is located on a front side of the sheet stacked on the shift tray 102, and takes the home position as the vertical position.
Every time the shift operation of the ejection roller 111 is reversed, the rotation shaft 205 is rotated in a direction that an arm 209F and an arm 209R attached to the rotation shaft 205 press the roots of the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R downward so as to move the rotation shaft 205 to a retraction position.
Every time the shift operation occurs, the aligning member on the opposite side is abutted against (mounted on) the sheet bundle of the previous “part”, so as to align the ejected sheet bundle. At this time, the friction coefficient is set to the value that suppresses deviation of the sheet S by the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R, enabling stable alignment of the sheets S.
The retraction amount of the main jogger 210F and the main jogger 210R is the retraction amount from the home position where the filler 208 is detected by the sensor S6.
This allows the ascending amount to be constant at all times. In a case where the home position is not moved (raised) to the position of the ejected bundle uppermost surface+α, the aligned bundle would collapse due to interference (contact) with the stacked sheet bundle which is moved in shift operation. Here, “+α” is a certain point up to the uppermost position, and a large α value would increase the margin for bulging due to curling and folding of the ejected sheet S. On the other hand, when the paper gap is clogged, it would take time to recover at reception of the next sheet.
Next, an air blower provided in a sheet stacker according to one embodiment of the present disclosure will be described. A fan 300 illustrated in
As illustrated in
Next, the configuration of the stacker 100 including the fan 300 will be further described. As illustrated in
Next, the structure of the duct 320 will be described with reference to
The switcher 330 operates to rotate on a predetermined axis, for example, as a driving source of the electric motor so as to switch the state illustrated in
Next, the structure of the switcher 330 will be described in more detail.
The duct 320 as well has a structure that achieves flow regulating effects.
According to the duct 320 having the above structure, it is possible to use the air flow regulating member 331, the upper flow regulator 323, the lower first flow regulator 324, and the lower second flow regulator 325 of the switcher 330 so as to guide the air flow generated by the fan motor 310 toward the blow port 340a or the blow port 340b. Moreover when leading the air, it is possible to prevent the air from leaking from the side surface of the switcher 330 or the like in an unintended direction and to prevent the air from blowing out from the blow port 340a or the blow port 340b at an unintended timing.
Next, operation of the stacker 100, switching operation of the switcher 330 in particular, will be described with reference to
Next, the relationship between the operation at the time of ejecting the sheet S in the stacker 100 and the operation of the fan 300 as an air blower will be described.
First, when the sheet conveyance passage sensor S1 detects the sheet S at a first stage, the fan motor 310 is operated to generate an air flow. At this time, the switcher 330 is inclined in the direction of the air. When the switcher 330 is inclined, the state goes into a state where the air blows out from the blow port 340a toward the ejected sheet S before the leading end of the sheet S ejected from the ejection roller 111 reaches the shift tray 102 (air blowing to the sheet S is turned on).
Subsequently, when the sheet conveyance passage sensor S1 stops detecting the sheet S at a second stage, the time when the trailing end of the sheet S passes through the position of the sheet conveyance passage sensor S1 indicates it is close to the completion of the ejection of the sheet S. Therefore, the switcher 330 is operated so as to blow out air in a direction different from the direction of the sheet S before the trailing end of the sheet S reaches the shift tray 102. This allows a state where the air blows out from the blow port 340b, while suppressing the air being blown out from the blow port 340a (blowing air to the sheet S is turned off).
As described above, the operation of the fan motor 310 and the operation of the switcher 330 can be controlled in accordance with the detection state of the sheet S, making it possible to control the air blowing state based on the ejection state of the sheet S. With this control, even when a sheet S susceptible to the influence of the air flow and easily causing deterioration in stackability such as a thin sheet is ejected, it is possible to blow out the air in a direction to urge the ejection of the sheet S at the time of ejection to be stacked on the shift tray 102, thereby improving the productivity. In addition, in order to suppress deterioration in stackability due to disturbance of the stacked sheets S, the air is controlled to be blown in the direction not to hit the sheet S at the timing when the trailing end of the sheet S reaches the shift tray (timing at which air affects the stacking). Since stopping the fan motor 310 at the timing when the trailing end of the sheet S reaches the shift tray would not be able to instantly stop the air blowing, and thus, switching operation of the switcher 330 is used to instantaneously switch the air blowing direction. This makes it possible to prevent the air flow used for increasing the productivity at the time of ejecting the sheet S from disturbing the stackability.
Note that the operation state of the fan motor 310 may be controlled in conjunction with the switching operation of the switcher 330 described above. For example, after turning on the air flow to the sheet S, the control may be performed such that the driving voltage of the fan motor 310 be first raised to increase the air generation amount, and thereafter, the driving voltage be gradually lowered as the ejection situation of the sheet S advances, and the drive voltage of the fan motor 310 be further lowered so as to decrease the air flow rate when the air flow to the sheet S is turned off. With this control, it is possible to control the driving amount of the fan motor 310 in conjunction with the switching operation of the air blowing direction, enabling further reduction of the influence of the air flow at unnecessary times. Together with this, it is possible to reduce the power consumption.
Further, the air blowing rate may be controlled by intermittently controlling ON/OFF of the fan motor 310 without raising and lowering the driving voltage. Furthermore, the drive voltage of the fan motor 310 can be controlled to be zero when the air flow to the sheet S is turned off, making it possible to set a large difference in air blowing rate in conjunction with the switching operation by the switcher 330.
The timing of switching ON/OFF of the fan motor 310 may be controlled in conjunction with the size of the sheet S to be ejected.
For example, when the sheet S to be ejected has a large size, a sufficient air blow can be obtained while the sheet S passes. Therefore, when the sheet size is large, the fan motor 310 may be turned off earlier than when the sheet size is small to stop the air blowing. Similarly, the timing at which the fan motor 310 is turned on to start air blowing may be set to an air blowing timing suitable for the size of the sheet S.
Meanwhile, the fan motor 310 has some time lag until it reaches a state of achieving the maximum air flow rate when operating from a stop state. Therefore, the timing of switching the switcher 330 in the direction of turning on the air can be adjusted so that the fan motor 310 can be operated before the operation of the switcher 330 so as to be able to obtain the maximum air flow rate, making it possible to obtain a sufficient blowing effect from the beginning of ejection of the sheet S (from the first sheet).
Next, an example of use of air when switcher 330 is switched so as to blow air from the blow port 340b will be described. As illustrated in
Therefore, the fan motor 310 can be operated at the same time that the sheet conveyance passage sensor S1 detects the sheet S so as to allow the air to be blown out from the blow port 340b, and allow the air to pass above the blow port 340b to be blown toward the sheet S under conveyance before passing through the ejection roller 111.
In this manner, air can be blown to the sheet S ejected from the ejection roller 111 toward the shift tray 102 before the sheet passage of the ejection roller 111, making it possible to achieve an effect of drying the ink or toner printed by the copier or the like. In addition, it is possible to obtain the effect of lowering the temperature of the conveyed sheet S.
Next,
Further, the CPU_PD1 controls the driving of the solenoid and the motor via a driver and a motor driver, and obtains sensor information in the apparatus from the interface. Furthermore, the CPU_PD1 uses a motor driver to control the driving of the motor via the I/O interface PD2 in accordance with detection results of the sheet S as a control target, the sheet conveyance passage sensor S1 and the sheet conveyance passage sensor S2, etc., so as to obtain sensor information from sensors. Note that the control is executed based on the program from program codes stored in a ROM, loaded by the CPU_PD1 to be developed into a RAM, and defined by the program code while using the RAM as a work area and a data buffer.
The control of the stacker 100 in
With this configuration of the control system of the printer system 600, the CPU_PD1 determines the rotation direction and the rotation start timing of the ejection roller 111 or the like on the basis of the sheet S conveyance information transmitted from the printer 500 side, and then performs driving control and shift control.
Furthermore, the CPU_PD1 executes control of operating the main jogger and press a sheet bundle SB at a timing of completion of conveying the final sheet S of one session. Furthermore, after completion of alignment processing, the CPU_PD1 moves the main jogger backward to return to the start position and executes auxiliary operation of releasing the sheet bundle SB.
The CPU_PD1 includes a ROM and a RAM (data storage) functioning as data storage. The ROM stores data used for appropriately changing and controlling operation timings of the switcher 330 and operation timings of the fan motor 310 in accordance with the size and type of the sheet S.
The invention made by the present inventors has been specifically described as above on the basis of preferred embodiments. The present invention is not limited to the description in the above embodiments, and various modifications may be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention.
Numerous additional modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings. It is therefore to be understood that, within the scope of the above teachings, the present disclosure may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described herein. With some embodiments having thus been described, it will be obvious that the same may be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the scope of the present disclosure and appended claims, and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the present disclosure and appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
2018-015559 | Jan 2018 | JP | national |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
5460361 | Mokler | Oct 1995 | A |
6522841 | Horikoshi | Feb 2003 | B2 |
8727345 | Konno | May 2014 | B2 |
8936240 | Hoshino | Jan 2015 | B2 |
9085436 | Suzuki | Jul 2015 | B2 |
10144601 | Masuda | Dec 2018 | B2 |
20130236228 | Nagasako et al. | Sep 2013 | A1 |
20160340145 | Kunieda et al. | Nov 2016 | A1 |
20160355364 | Shibata et al. | Dec 2016 | A1 |
20190351636 | Akita | Nov 2019 | A1 |
20190382227 | Sakagami | Dec 2019 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
2006-290574 | Oct 2006 | JP |
2013-184809 | Sep 2013 | JP |
2014-040326 | Mar 2014 | JP |
2015-007708 | Jan 2015 | JP |
2015-127840 | Jul 2015 | JP |
2016-013926 | Jan 2016 | JP |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20190233237 A1 | Aug 2019 | US |