Feeding device for postal items of different sizes

摘要

The system is installed upstream of a franking machine and has a mail transport path with a first feeding zone for differently-sized mail articles (10) comprising a number of transport rollers (16). A second selection zone (18) performs individual selection of the mail articles and has a number of transport rollers (20). A third zone (24) conveys the individually extracted articles from the mail stack one-by-one and directs them to the franking machine and has a third set of rollers (22). A first set of sensors (128,130,132) identify the different sizes of the mail articles in the first zone. A second set of sensors (120,122) detect passage of the articles in the second and third zones. A number of driving clutches engage the rollers and are activated selectively in accordance with a predetermined sequence defined by a microprocessor controller as a function of the states of the sensor sets.