A medium conveying apparatus includes a conveyance guide that is supported by a frame so as to be able to be lifted and lowered, and guides a medium to a conveyance path by sliding along one surface of the medium, a conveyance roller that is rotatably supported by the frame, and conveys the medium by coming into contact with an other surface of the medium, the other surface being on the reverse side of the one surface, and a pinch roller that is supported by the frame so as to be able to be lifted and lowered, and presses the medium against the conveyance roller by coming into contact with the one surface of the medium, wherein the conveyance guide lifts or lowers the pinch roller relatively to the frame, by being lifted or lowered relatively to the frame.

An assembly to manufacture a roll of prepreg material. The assembly includes a moving system for picking a sheet of prepreg material from a stack of sheets and moving the sheet along a feed path. An alignment system aligns a leading edge of the sheets with a trailing edge of a roll of the prepreg material. A welding system connects the sheet to the roll.

A recording material transport device including a transport section that transports a recording material and a support member disposed to extend in a direction intersecting with a vertical direction, and supporting the recording material from below with the transport stopped, in which the support member is provided to be capable of descending, and, as the support member descends, both of one end portion and the other end portion in the direction intersecting with the vertical direction descend and are inclined such that the one end portion is positioned below the other end portion.

An image reading apparatus includes a document tray, a common transport route, a curved transport route, a linear transport route, a switching device, a document transport device, a first image sensor, a second image sensor, a trailing edge detector, a multi feed detector, a leading edge detector, and a controller. The controller determines a length of the document in the transport direction, on a basis of a time point that the leading edge detector has detected the leading edge of the document, a time point that the trailing edge detector has detected the trailing edge of the document, and a time point that a detection status of the multi feed detector has been switched to a non-detection state, and guides the document to the curved transport route or the linear transport route from the common transport route, according to the length of the document, by controlling the switching device.

An image forming apparatus may include a mechanism for forming a corrugated shape in a sheet to be conveyed. The mechanism may include various components include one or more pressing portions, one or more ribs, one or more discharge rollers, a switching mechanism and the like. In one arrangement, ribs and pressing portions configured to create the corrugated shape may be disposed at various locations upstream or downstream of the platen, recording portion and/or nozzles thereof. In one example, pressing portions may be disposed both upstream and downstream of the nozzles of the recording portion to maintain a corrugated shape in the conveyed sheet. Various other configurations may be used.

There is provided an ink-jet recording apparatus including: a first transporting portion provided in a first transport path; a support member configured to support the sheet; a recording portion; a plurality of contact portions configured to come into contact with the sheet; a plurality of support ribs; a second transporting portion provided in a second transport path connected with the first transport path; and a third transporting portion configured to sandwich and transport the sheet in the first transporting direction or toward the second transport path. On the upstream side to the second transporting portion in the second transporting direction, a projecting portion is formed with the upper guide member to project toward the lower guide member below a virtual line linking a nip position of the sheet due to the third transporting portion with another nip position of the sheet due to the second transporting portion.

A reading device including a position reference member having a reference pattern having a line extending along a first direction of the position reference member, the position reference member movable in a second direction orthogonal to the first direction; a reader including a plurality of sensor chips arranged along the first direction, each of the sensor chips having a length defined by a plurality of pixels; and circuitry. The circuitry is configured to detect the reference pattern of the position reference member using the reader; determine coordinates of at least two sensor chips in the second direction, based on the detected reference pattern of the position reference member; and correct a position of a reading target in the second direction based on the coordinates determined for the at least two sensor chips of the reader in the second direction.

It is aimed to downsize of the entire apparatus without setting the swing angle of a swing member to be unnecessarily large. A pickup roller, which is for feeding a document disposed on a feeding tray, is supported by a pickup arm that is swingable about a rotation shaft. Depending on the rotational direction of the rotation axis, the pickup arm swings between the first position, in which the pickup roller is in contact with the document on the feeding tray, and the second position, in which the pickup roller is above and not in contact with the feeding tray. An arm member is rotated by rotation of the rotation axis after the pickup arm swings to the second position.

A sheet guiding device includes a cover unit, a swing guide, a link member, and a contact member. The cover unit is configured to be openably disposed on a housing of an image forming apparatus. The swing guide is configured to move between a guide position at which the swing guide is open to guide a sheet and a retracted position at which the swing guide is closed. The swing guide is configured to move from the retracted position to the guide position along with closing movement of the cover unit. The link member has one end configured to be held by the housing and an opposite end engaged with the swing guide. The contact member is disposed on the cover unit. The contact member is configured to contact the link member to rotate the link member in the closing movement of the cover unit.

A method and apparatus for processing documents are provided. The apparatus includes a feeder for receiving a packet of a plurality of documents and separating the documents to serially feed the documents to a scanner. A retard adjacent the feeder is operable in first and second positions. In the first position the retard forms a nip with the feeder so that the retard is operable to impede the progress of one or more documents in the packet while the feeder feeds one of the documents in the packet. In the second position, the retard is spaced apart from the feeder to form a gap between the feeder and the retard. The system further includes a sensor for detecting a characteristic of the documents in a packet indicative of whether the number of documents in the packet exceeds a predetermined threshold. A drive mechanism automatically drives the retard pad between the first and second positions in response to the detected characteristic.