The repositioning station (200) allows a continuous shingled stream (120) of overlapping semirigid planar articles (100) to be transported on an incoming conveyor (122) along a transport circuit (204) onto an outgoing conveyor (302) so as to form a stack that can be carried away upon the outgoing conveyor (302). The repositioning station (200) includes a lateral deviation assembly (210) and may also include a final positioning assembly (212). The transport circuit (204) within the lateral deviation assembly (210) follows a generally ellipsoidal deviation path to veer the shingled stream (120) and also to pivot the articles (100) therein about a curvilinear axis (206) from a facedown position to an upright position. The outgoing conveyor (302) can carry the cartons (100) in a direction that is parallel to that of the incoming conveyor (122).

A system for conveying blanks to a stacker creates a big enough time gap between a last blank of a current stack and the first blank of the next stack to allow the stacker to discharge the current stack without interrupting the feed of new sheets for the next stack.

Provided is the sheet bundle transport apparatus including: an abutment unit that performs switching between an abutment state at a predetermined position and a non-abutment state; first and second press units that press the sheet bundle against first and second transport units; a press switching unit that performs switching between a first press state where the first and second press units press the sheet bundle in a predetermined region located upstream from the predetermined position in the transport direction and a second press state where the first press unit does not press the sheet bundle in the predetermined region; and a control unit that controls the abutment unit and the press switching unit to switch the non-abutment state to the abutment state and switch the first press state to the second press state so as to change an angle relative to the width direction of a predetermined sheet bundle.

A front end conveyor includes a frame having a first side and a second side, a lower deck and an upper deck. The lower deck includes a plurality of sheet supports, and upper portions of the sheet supports lie in a first plane. The upper deck includes a plurality of sheet guides, and the plurality of sheet supports and the plurality of sheet guides define therebetween a sheet transport path for moving sheets in a sheet transport direction toward the downstream end of the front end conveyor. A transverse scrap conveyor is mounted below the lower deck to carry scrap in a direction perpendicular to the sheet transport direction. The transverse scrap conveyor is secured to and supported by the frame such that the transverse scrap conveyor is movable with the frame as a unit.

The sheet discharge device includes a sheet discharge port, a discharge member, a sheet discharge tray, a support member, a drive mechanism, and a controller. The discharge member conveys sheets in a discharge direction. On the sheet discharge tray, the sheets discharged from the sheet discharge port are to be stacked. The support member is movable by the drive mechanism between a projective position in which the support member is projected to above the sheet discharge tray so as to support the sheets, and a retractive position in which the support member has retracted from the projective position to an upstream side of the sheet discharge port. The controller is enabled to adjust at least one of a projective length of the support member in its projective position and a shift timing from the projective position to the retractive position in response to characteristics of the sheets.

The shingling device comprises: a shingling conveyor, adapted to receive a stream of sheets aligned with one another and not overlapping; a braking device, positioned above the shingling conveyor and configured to slow down the sheets arriving to the shingling conveyor, and to partially overlap the incoming sheets in shingling fashion. The braking device comprises: a first set of braking wheels aligned with one another along a first rotation axis orthogonal to a feed direction of the sheets to the shingling conveyor; and a second set of braking wheels aligned with one another along a second rotation axis orthogonal to the feed direction of the sheets to the shingling conveyor.

A system for conveying blanks to a stacker creates a big enough time gap between a last blank of a current stack and the first blank of the next stack to allow the stacker to discharge the current stack without interrupting the feed of new sheets for the next stack.

A printing apparatus includes a printing unit, first and second conveyance units conveying a print medium, and a control unit performing reduction control to reduce an overlap amount between a preceding print medium and a succeeding print medium by using a speed difference. In a first case in which a trailing end of the preceding print medium and a leading end of the succeeding print medium are positioned in an interval between the first and second conveyance units, a conveying speed of the preceding print medium is set to a first speed. In a second case which is different from the first case and in which the trailing end and the leading end are positioned in the interval between the first and second conveyance units, the conveying speed of the preceding print medium is set to a second speed different from the first speed.