Recirculating document feed apparatus and method for aligning documents therein

摘要

A document feed device, illustrated with a copier machine, for recirculating documents through a processing station. A movable portion of the document feed device is mounted for pivoting movement to expose a lower document feed path. The movable portion contains several document moving rollers but no prime movers, gears or belts; these rolls are driven by frictional contact with each other and ultimately by contact with a set of driven rollers located in the nonmoving portion of the document feed device. The rollers comprising a document moving nip are oppositely skewed relative to the direction of document travel in order to move documents gently toward a reference edge and coefficients of friction of roller materials are chosen to insure correct document alignment.