METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CUTTING MAILING MACHINE ROLL TAPE

摘要

A mailing machine for printing a postage indicia with or without an advertisement on envelopes and varying lengths of postage tape. Also, a method of feeding, printing and cutting postage tape in a mailing machine. The mailing machine includes: an elongate feed deck; a postage meter mounted in the mailing machine and having a printer downstream of the feed deck for printing a postage indicia with or without an advertisement on successive envelopes as they are fed along the feed deck or on postage tape; and a tape feeding and cutting apparatus mounted in the mailing machine for feeding postage tape to the postage meter for printing of the postage indicia with or without advertisement and for cutting the postage tape into finite lengths and ejecting the lengths of tape from the mailing machine. The tape feeding and cutting apparatus includes: a device for storing a supply roll of tape of indefinite length; a device for feeding tape from the tape supply roll to the postage meter printer for printing of the postage indicia with or without advertisement on a portion of the tape; a device for sensing when the postage meter printer has completed printing the postage indicia with or without advertisement; a device for retracting an amount of tape from the postage meter printer as determined by the sensing device which will result in an appropriate, finite length of tape being cut by the tape feeding and cutting apparatus; a device for cutting the printed portion of the tape from the roll of tape; and a device for ejecting the cut, printed portion of tape from the mailing machine, whereby the cut, printed portion of tape includes only the amount of tape necessary for the printing of the indicia with or without advertisement regardless of the length of any advertisement printed.