Wet paper handling of ink jet images to allow passive drying

摘要

An ink jet printer has a sheet conveying and drying device having a plurality of flexible, resilient yet stiff fingers connected in a cantilevered manner to a drive chain which moves the fingers from a printed sheet receiving tray to a sheet stacking tray. After sheets are printed by a conventional ink jet printing head, the sheets are picked off of the printed sheet receiving tray and fed to a sheet stacking tray. The printed sheets are dried while being fed from the printed sheet receiving tray to the sheet stacking tray. After the printed sheets are picked off of the fingers at the sheet stacking tray, the chain drive continues to move the fingers in a counterclockwise direction along the chain path. The resilient, flexible fingers are deformed by upper and lower guide rollers, a stacking tray and a rear separating wall and are flicked back into a sheet receiving position at the printed sheet receiving tray. The speed at which the chain drive moves the fingers can be varied to ensure that the images are dried by the time they reach the sheet stacking tray.