摘要 |
Printer apparatus of the kind having a housing, a print zone and a serial printing device for printing along line sectors of print media that are successively advanced into and out of the print zone includes an integral subsystem for handling discrete sheets of print media. This subsystem includes (a) transport member having a peripheral surface that is movable around an endless path past a sheet ingress zone, the print zone and a sheet egress zone; (b) a drive for moving the transport member surface around the endless path; (c) a sheet supply station formed within the housing and including a device for positioning the face of a sheet-stack adjacent the path of the transport member at a position upstream of the sheet ingress zone; and (d) engagement device for effecting periodic feeding engagements between the transport means and successive face sheets of a positioned stack. Preferred embodiments of the engagement device comprise (i) especially sized and configured feed/transport surfaces on a cylindrical platen or (ii) a platen drive cam sequencer for moving the sheet stack toward and away from the platen.
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