Envelope hopper for feed and delivery

Claim 1

Apparatus for feeding documents seriatim from a stack of such documents maintained on edge through a transport path to, around and from a print station located along a rotatably driven platen in a printer comprising: divided storage means having an input and output hopper located upstream of the platen for holding separately fresh and printed documents; a picker station adjacent said divided storage having a picker roller, a feed roller and a backup roller, wherein said backup roller and said feed roller form a feed nip, and wherein said picker roller is coaxial to said feed roller, said picker roller located at one side, its axis parallel to the axis of the platen, of the storage means drivingly connected to the platen and having a protruding edge for engaging the bottom edge of a fresh document to be fed and urging it away from the stack and into the transport path, said picker roller having a larger diameter than said feed roller to allow said document to enter the feed nip; an output throat area having an endless belt, fixed guide means, and resilient means for urging the bottom edge of said printed document to contact relation with said endless moving belt for transporting said document away from said output throat area and into said output hopper; said transport path being generally triangular in shape and defined by endless belt means continuously moving through said divided storage means, picker station, print station, and output throat; said continuously moving belt means being provided for simultaneously urging the stack of fresh document toward said picker roller means, urging a picked document around said platen to said output throat, and the printed documents away from the entry area to said printed document storage section of said divided storage means.