JPH05116811A - Medium aligning method and medium aligning mechanism - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable aligning by using a medium center as a reference and realize printing or reading with high precision, by making a combination of a medium skew removal, medium-width and widthwise-position detection, and widthwise-position correction. CONSTITUTION:By rotating a skew removal roller 13a, the skew of a medium 1 is removed, and then, by moving a sensor carriage 19 equipped with a reflection sensor 26a in the widthwise direction of the medium 1 the amount of the sensor carriage 19 moved from a home position thereof is counted to detect the widthwise position of the medium 1 and detect the width of the medium. Subsequently, on the basis of the detected results the widthwise shifted amount of the medium 1 is calculated, and, by the shifted amount, the medium is shifted.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an aligning method and an aligning mechanism for aligning and correcting a medium in a printer, an optical reader, or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art When recording on a medium or reading information on the medium, it is necessary to perform a so-called aligning operation for aligning the medium with a reference position. As such an aligning technique, there is a conventional method, for example, Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. Sho 61-8074.
Some are disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. This is done by aligning the media edge with a fixed reference edge.

[0003]

However, in the mechanism disclosed in the above document, the medium is drawn to the side guide, which is the reference end, so that the medium is aligned with the end of the medium as a reference. Therefore, the apparatus for performing the medium processing (for example, printing) based on the center line 1 of the medium 1 shown in FIG. 5 cannot adopt the aligning mechanism based on the medium edge. FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing the printing of the center reference.

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a method and a mechanism for realizing aligning on the basis of a medium center, thereby realizing highly accurate printing or reading. It is to be.

[0005]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a first invention is a medium aligning method for aligning a medium by moving it in the width direction. And the width of the medium are detected, and based on the detected position and width of the medium, the shift amount until the center of the medium width direction coincides with the center of the recording position or the reading position is calculated. The medium is shifted only by the shift means.

A second aspect of the present invention is a medium aligning mechanism for moving a medium in the width direction for aligning the medium.
Shifting means for shifting the medium in the width direction, detecting means for detecting the position of the medium in the width direction, measuring means for measuring the width of the medium, and center of the medium in the width direction based on the outputs of the detecting means and the measuring means. And a calculating means for calculating the shift amount until the position coincides with the center of the recording position or the reading position.

[0007]

According to the first aspect of the invention, the position in the width direction of the medium and the medium width are first detected by the detecting means. Next, a shift amount for shifting the medium in the width direction is calculated based on the detected position and width of the medium. The shift amount is a shift amount until the center of the medium in the width direction coincides with the medium processing position, that is, the center of the recording position or the reading position. Then, the medium is shifted in the width direction by the shift means by the shift amount.
This enables centering-based aligning.

According to the second invention, first, the position of the medium in the width direction is detected by the detecting means, and the width of the medium is measured by the measuring means. Based on this result, the calculating unit calculates the shift amount until the center of the medium in the width direction coincides with the center of the recording position or the reading position. Next, the medium is shifted in the width direction by the shift means by the calculated shift amount.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. Note that elements common to the drawings are given the same reference numerals.

FIG. 1 is a flow chart showing the operation of the embodiment according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a plan view showing the aligning mechanism of the embodiment, and FIG. 3 is a side view showing the aligning mechanism of the embodiment. First, the structure of the aligning mechanism of the embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS.

In FIGS. 2 and 3, on the top plate 11 which guides and conveys the medium 1, the conveying rollers 12a and 12b which convey the medium 1, the skew removing rollers 13a and 13b which remove the skew of the medium 1 and the medium 1 are arranged. Shift rollers 14a and 14b for shifting the width in the width direction are rotatably arranged. The transport rollers 12a and 12b and the skew removing rollers 13a and 13b are driven by a motor (not shown), and the upper rollers 12a and 13a are solenoids 15 and 16, respectively.
away from b and 13b. The shift rollers 14a and 14b are rotationally driven by the motor 17 shown in FIG. 3, and the upper shift roller 14a is also separated from the lower roller 14b by the solenoid 18.

A sensor carriage 19 is provided between the transport roller 12a and the shift roller 14a and has shafts 20a and 20b.
It is slidably attached to. Sensor carriage 19
Is fixed to the belt 21 and is moved in the width direction of the medium 1 by the rotation of the motor 22. As shown in FIG. 2, a shield plate 23 is attached to the end of the sensor carriage 19 so as to block the optical path of the home position sensor 24 provided on the top plate 11. A black reflection plate 25 is arranged below the sensor carriage 19, and a reflection sensor is built in the sensor carriage 19.

Transmission sensors 26a and 26b are provided on the right side of the skew removing rollers 13a and 13b to detect the presence or absence of the medium 1. Further, a shutter 27 is mounted on the right side of the shutter 27 so as to be movable in the vertical direction shown in FIG. The shutter 27 is guided by a guide 29 by a solenoid 28 to move up and down, and when the shutter 27 moves upward, it closes the conveyance path of the medium 1.

Next, the electrical structure of the embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an embodiment according to the present invention.

In the figure, a control unit 31 controls the operation of the entire medium aligning mechanism according to this embodiment. Two transmission sensors 26, a home position sensor 24, and a reflection sensor 32 built in the sensor carriage 19 are connected to the control unit 31, and the detection signals of the respective sensors are input. Further control unit 3
1 is connected to the motor drive circuits 33, 34, 35, 36, and the motor drive circuit 33 connects the transport rollers 12a,
A motor 37 that rotates 12b is driven, and a motor drive circuit 34 drives a motor 38 that rotates the skew removing rollers 13a and 13b. The motor drive circuit 35 is shown in FIG.
The motor 17 shown in FIG.
The motor 22 shown in is driven. Further, the control unit 31 drives and controls the solenoids 15, 16, 18, 28 shown in FIG.

A memory 39 and a counter 4 are provided in the control unit 31.
0 and an arithmetic unit 41 are provided.

The operation of the embodiment having the above structure is mainly shown in FIG.
It will be described according to the flowchart shown in FIG.

The medium 1 is conveyed in the direction of arrow A shown in FIG. 2 by the conveying rollers 12a and 12b. Figure 3 at this time
The upper shift roller 14a and the upper skew removing roller 13a shown in FIG. 2 are separated from the lower rollers 14b and 13b by solenoids 18 and 16,
The medium 1 can be transported. The transport rollers 12a and 12b are stopped when the front end of the medium 1 passes the skew removal rollers 13a and 13b. Solenoid 2 here
8 is turned on and the shutter 27 is raised (step 1).

Next, the solenoid 16 is turned on to bring the upper skew removing roller 13a into pressure contact with the medium 1, and
The solenoid 15 is turned off, and the upper conveying roller 12a is separated from the medium 1. Next, the control unit 31 drives the motor 38 via the motor drive circuit 34 to rotate the skew removing rollers 13a and 13b in the arrow direction shown in FIG. 3 (step 2). As a result, the medium 1 advances in the direction of arrow A and passes between the transmission sensors 26a and 26b. When it is confirmed that the medium 1 has passed between the two sensors 26a and 26b shown in FIG. 2 (step 3), the controller 31 rotates the skew removing rollers 13a and 13b by a predetermined amount (step 4). .. The rotation amount in this case is a rotation amount sufficient for the tip of the medium 1 to hit the shutter 27,
The skew is removed by abutting the tip of the medium 1 against the two shutters 27.

Next, the control unit 31 turns the solenoid 16 off.
After moving F to separate the upper skew removing roller 13a from the medium 1, the motor 22 is rotated via the motor drive circuit 36 (step 5), and the shield plate 23 shown in FIG. Carriage 19
Are moved in the width direction of the medium 1. When the home position sensor 24 detects the shield plate 23 (step 6), the sensor carriage 19 is moved in the direction of arrow B shown in FIG. At this time, the counter 40 in the control unit 31 counts the number of pulses of the motor 22 (step 7). When the reflection sensor 32 in the sensor carriage 19 detects the side edge 1a of the medium 1 (step 8), the number of pulses counted up to that point is stored in the memory 39 in the controller 31 (step 9).

The sensor carriage 19 continues to move, and the number of pulses of the motor 22 is continuously counted (step 10). The reflection sensor 32 is the medium 1
When the other side end portion 1b (shown in FIG. 2) of the control unit 3 is detected (step 11), the number of pulses counted until then is determined by the control unit 3.
The data is stored in the memory 39 in 1 (step 12).

After that, the movement of the sensor carriage 19 is stopped, the control unit 31 reads out the respective count numbers stored in Step 9 and Step 12, and the arithmetic unit 41 determines the position in the width direction of the medium 1 and the medium 1 from both count numbers.
Calculate the width of. Then, a shift amount between the center position of the range in the medium width direction of printing or reading as the medium processing operation performed after this aligning operation and the center position of the medium 1 in the width direction is calculated, and this shift amount is shifted in the medium 1. The quantity is output to the motor drive circuit 35 (step 13). The shift motor 17 shifts the shift roller 14a,
14b is rotated (at this time, the upper shift roller 14a
Is in contact with the medium 1) (step 14), and the medium 1 is moved in the direction of arrow B shown in FIG. 2 or in the opposite direction (step 15). Thereby, the center position of the medium 1 in the width direction coincides with the center position of the printing or reading in the medium width direction. After that, the control unit 31 turns off the solenoid 28 and opens the shutter 27 so that the medium 1 can be conveyed.

[0023]

As described in detail above, according to the present invention, medium skew removal, medium width and width direction position detection,
By combining it with the three operations of the position correction in the width direction, it becomes possible to align the media center. As a result, the printing position or reading position can be made highly accurate in the center-based medium processing device.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing the operation of an embodiment according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view showing an aligning mechanism of an embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a side view showing the aligning mechanism of the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an embodiment.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing printing with a center reference.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Medium 12a, 12b Conveying Rollers 13a, 13b Skew Removing Rollers 14a, 14b Shift Roller 19 Sensor Carriage 26a, 26b Transmission Sensor 27 Shutter 31 Control Section 32 Reflection Sensor

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A medium aligning method for aligning a medium by moving the medium in the width direction, the position of the medium in the width direction is detected by a detecting means, and the width of the medium is detected, and the detected position and width of the medium. Based on the above, a shift amount until the center of the medium in the width direction coincides with the center of the recording position or the reading position is calculated, and the medium is shifted by the shift means by the calculated shift amount. 2. A medium aligning mechanism for aligning a medium by moving the medium in the width direction, a shift means for shifting the medium in the width direction, a detecting means for detecting a position in the width direction of the medium, and a width of the medium. And a calculating unit for calculating a shift amount until the center of the medium in the width direction coincides with the center of the recording position or the reading position based on the outputs of the detecting unit and the measuring unit. And a media aligning mechanism.