JPH02286546A - Paper supply/discharge tray - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To cut space of a supply/discharge tray by forming the end of a pair of discharge rollers of the discharge tray in an upper and lower double step, so as to use it also as a manual supply tray during manual paper supply. CONSTITUTION:During manual paper supply, a lateral guiding plate 7 is moved so as to fit the distance from the paper sending nominal provided for a supply/ discharge tray 16 according to the paper sending nominal for an image forming device 21, up to a lateral guiding plate 17, to the width of the paper sheet to be manually supplied. The paper sheet is then inserted in a direction marked by an arrow 'D', and the manual supply is thus performed. The inserted paper sheet 3c passes between a back surface 16f of a point receiving part 16a of the discharged paper sheet and a point 16g of the supply/discharge tray 16, via a pair of manual supply rollers 18, a guide plate 19, and a pair of carrier rollers 20, reaches a pair of secondary scanning rollers 10, and through the same process as of the paper sheet supplied by a cassette 1, is discharged on the supply/discharge tray 16.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a paper feed/discharge tray, in particular, for example, to a paper discharge tray of an image forming apparatus. This relates to a paper feeding tray that also serves as a paper feed tray.

[Prior Art] Conventionally, in an image forming apparatus, etc., as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, paper 3 loaded in a cassette l is fed and printed, and the paper 3b after printing is transferred to a paper ejection tray 33. The structure is mainly for ejecting paper, and a manual paper feeding section 3o is also added as an auxiliary paper feeding means.

In this manual paper feed, a dedicated manual paper feed tray 31 is installed, and the paper is inserted into the manual paper feed port 32 using the tray 31 as a guide. The printed paper (sheet material) 3b is discharged to the same paper discharge tray 33 as the paper 3 fed from the cassette 1.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in the above conventional example, a special paper feeding tray must be installed for the auxiliary paper feeding means called manual paper feeding. (1) Providing special trays for items that are not regularly used is a waste of space and cost.

(2) As shown in Figure 4, in order to be able to feed and eject paper and replace cassette 1 only on one side,
A manual paper feed tray 31 must be installed below the paper feed tray 3, which makes manual paper feeding difficult.

(3) As shown in Figure 5, if the paper bus is made into a straight shape to miniaturize the device, the manual paper feed tray 31 can be used with good operability, but the paper is ejected from the side opposite to the paper feed side. This is inconvenient because the device cannot be operated from only one side, including when changing cassettes.

There were drawbacks such as.

[Means for solving the problem (and action)] The present invention has the following features:
This was done in view of the drawbacks of the conventional example described above, and by configuring the end of the paper ejection tray on the side of the pair of paper ejection rollers to have two upper and lower stages, the upper and lower surfaces can receive the ejected paper, The lower surface receives paper to be manually fed, and the paper is guided between the upper and lower surfaces for manual paper feeding.

[Embodiment] FIG. 1 shows a sectional view of an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 shows a plan view of a paper feed/discharge tray of the embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, sheets 3 stacked on a sheet stacking plate 2 of a cassette 1 are urged by a pressure spring 4 toward a half-moon-shaped pickup roller 6 of an image forming apparatus 21. As shown in FIG.

Therefore, when the pickup roller 6 rotates, the uppermost sheet 3a of the stacked sheets is separated into one sheet by the separation claw 5 and conveyed to the printing section 11 by the paper guide 7.8, a pair of conveying rollers 9, and a pair of width scanning rollers 10. , by the print head 12 by the print head width by an inkjet method (for example, a method of creating an image using a recording liquid that uses thermal energy to form droplets of recording liquid in "bubble jet recording method"). It will be printed. The print head 12 is movable by a main scanning rail 13 in a direction perpendicular to the paper feeding direction, and is driven by a stepping motor (not shown) controlled by an electric control circuit 14. The sub-scanning roller 10 uses a stepping motor (not shown) controlled by a control circuit 14 to intermittently feed the paper 3a by one print width in accordance with the operation of the print head, and sequentially prints on the paper. be.

The printed paper 3a is discharged by a pair of paper discharge rollers 15 to a paper supply/discharge tray 16 according to the present invention.

Here, the leading edge 3b (indicated by a chain line in the figure) of the paper ejected by the pair of paper ejecting rollers 15 is connected to the paper leading edge receiver 16.
It moves in the direction of arrow A in the figure while being received by A. Subsequently, the paper passes along the upper edge 17a of the horizontal guide plate 17 for manual paper feeding, which is set at a position not higher than the leading end receiving portion 16a, and advances to the rear end 16b of the paper feed/discharge tray 16.

The sheets 3a thus discharged by the pair of sheet discharge rollers 15 are stacked on the tray.

Note that 30 is a part of a discharge tray fixedly provided inside the main body of the image apparatus, and the entire discharge tray is composed of a portion 30, a portion 16a, and a portion 16b, and a sheet material 3a'' is placed thereon.

In addition, since the paper feed/discharge tray 16 is freely rotatably supported by a tray receiving portion 21a provided in the image forming apparatus main body 21 by a support shaft 16c, it can be folded by rotating it clockwise four times using the support shaft 16c as a fulcrum. is also possible. Also, the front side (16b) of the manual feed tray 16 overlaps the extension of the paper output tray 16a (in a substantially horizontal state).
It can also be said that it is arranged like this. Furthermore, the paper output tray (
+ 6a, 16b) can be said to have formed gaps for manual insertion. 16g becomes a guide part for the sheet material inserted through the gap.

FIG. 2 shows a plan view of the paper feed/discharge tray 16 according to the present invention, and the horizontal guide plate 17 for manual paper feed is moved by a guide portion 17b passed through a guide groove 166 provided in the paper feed/discharge tray 16. It can be guided and moved to any position in the direction of arrow B in the figure.

In order to match the paper feed standard 18e provided on the paper feed/discharge tray 16 to the horizontal guide plate 17 in accordance with the paper feed standard of the image forming apparatus 21 during manual paper feeding, the distance @C is adjusted to the paper width of the paper to be manually fed. Move the horizontal guide plate 7 to after that,
Insert the paper in the direction of the arrow to perform manual paper feeding.

The inserted paper 3C (shown in FIG. 1) is further manually fed between the back 1.6f of the leading edge receiving portion 16a of the ejected paper and the leading edge 16g of the paper feed/discharge tray 16. The paper passes through a pair of paper rollers 18, a guide plate 19, and a pair of transport rollers 20, and then reaches a pair of sub-scanning rollers 10, and is discharged onto the paper feed/discharge tray 16 through the same process as the paper fed from the cassette 1.

[Other Embodiments] (+) In this embodiment, the case where the paper feed reference is based on one side has been described, but it is also possible in an image forming apparatus having the paper feed reference 22 based on the center of the paper. For example, as shown in FIG. 3, it can be applied by providing two lateral guide plates 25 and interlocking them with gears 26, racks 27, etc.

(2) In the first and second embodiments, the case where the horizontal guide plate 7 or 25 is provided during manual paper feeding has been described, but a skew correction mechanism for paper manually fed into the image forming apparatus main body 21 has been described. It is also possible to omit the horizontal guide plate 7 or 25 on the paper feed/discharge tray 16 side by attaching a plate or the like.

(3) In this embodiment, a single manual feed method is used (inserting one sheet of paper at a time), but it goes without saying that the present invention can also be applied to a multi-manual feed method (inserting multiple sheets of paper). Naturally, in the case of multiple sheets, separate paper feeding means is required.

(4) Although an image forming apparatus using an inkjet method has been described, it goes without saying that the present invention can also be applied to image forming apparatuses using other methods such as an electrophotographic method. .

(5) Of course, by arranging the rollers 15, 15 even closer to the tray 16a side, the tray 3° can be omitted.

[Effects of the Invention] As shown in the present invention, the end of the paper ejection tray on the side of the pair of paper ejection rollers is structured in two stages, upper and lower, so that it can also be used as a manual paper feed tray when manually feeding paper. Therefore, there is no need to specially install a manual paper feed tray for a mechanism that is not always used, such as manual paper feed, and space and cost reductions can be achieved.

Even if the manual paper feed slot is installed on the same side as the side where cassettes are replaced or paper is ejected, there is no inconvenience such as it being under the paper output tray, making it difficult to manually feed paper.
As a whole, an image forming apparatus with good operability can be provided.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a sectional view of a paper feed/discharge tray and an image forming apparatus according to the present invention (the paper discharge tray portion is a cross section taken along the line A-A in FIG. 2); FIG. 2 is a plan view of the paper feed/discharge tray according to the present invention; FIG. 3 is a plan view of the paper feed/discharge tray according to the second embodiment, and FIGS. 4 and 5 are sectional views of the conventional example. l...Cassette 16...Paper supply/discharge tray 16a...Top receiving section 17 for ejected paper...
・・Horizontal guide plate (for one-sided feed standard) 25・・・・
Horizontal guide plate (for center feeding standard) 31... Manual paper feed tray 33... Paper output tray 1a

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) A receiving surface at the leading end of the sheet material discharged from the sheet material discharge port of an image forming apparatus, etc.; a guide surface that guides the sheet material to the material feed port; when the sheet material is ejected, the sheet material is received by spanning the receiving surface and the guide surface; when the sheet material is fed, the sheet material is received by spanning the receiving surface and the guide surface; A paper feed/discharge tray that also serves as a paper feed guide for sheet material, characterized in that the sheet material is inserted between the receiving surface and the leading end of the sheet material is guided to a paper feed port of an image forming apparatus or the like. (2) The guide surface of the sheet material has a horizontal guide plate that guides the sheet material by moving in a direction perpendicular to the insertion direction in accordance with the width of the sheet material.
Paper input/output tray as described in section. (3) Claim 1 applied to an image forming apparatus that uses a bubble jet recording method, that is, a method of creating an image using a recording liquid that uses thermal energy to form droplets of the recording liquid. Paper input/output tray as described in section.