An image forming apparatus includes an image forming station for forming an image on the basis of image information; a top plate portion provided in an upper portion and including a stacking surface having a length in a predetermined direction longer than a length of a short side of a maximum size sheet on which the image forming station is capable of forming the image and shorter than a length of a long side of the maximum size sheet; a wall portion projected upwardly at a position of one end portion with respect to the predetermined direction of the top plate portion and provided with a wall surface inclined so as to form an obtuse angle between itself and the stacking surface of the top plate portion; and a connecting portion having a curved surface configured to connect the stacking surface and the wall surface with each other.

Method for predicting the presence of product defects during an intermediate processing step of a thin product wound in a roll, which provides forreceiving a roll of thin product that has been assigned a unique identification code stored in a database system, this latter containing process and/or product parameters detected in the production steps of said thin product wound in said roll upstream of said intermediate processing step, associated with said unique identification code, accessing said database system, entering one or more of the process and/or product parameters associated with the unique identification code of said roll contained in said database system in a predictive model, which uses a correlation, created by means of machine learning logics, from historicized values related to the process and/or product parameters output from said intermediate processing step and historicized values related to process and/or product parameters of the same rolls detected in the production steps of said rolls upstream of said intermediate processing step, in order to predict product parameters output from said intermediate processing step, comparing said aforesaid product parameters with respective predefined limit values, generating predictive diagnosis information of thin product defects based on the result of said comparison.

The invention relates to a monitoring method (100) for monitoring a winding process on a winding device (1), comprising: providing (104) a correlation of an irregularity (12) of a web material (11) to a running parameter (13) of the reel (10) for an unwinding process. The invention further relates to a control method (200) for performing an unwinding process on an unwinding device, comprising: obtaining (201) a correlation of an irregularity (12) of a web material (11) to at least one running parameter (13) of a reel (10) from a winding process. Furthermore, the invention relates to a processing method (300) for performing a process of processing a web material (11). Furthermore, the invention relates to a winding device (1) for performing a winding process of a web material (11) to a reel (10), an unwinding device (2) for performing an unwinding process of a web material (11) of a reel (10) and a processing system (3) for processing a web material (11).

The invention relates to a device for unwinding a coil of a metal strip including a bogie translatable back and forth along a guiding system; a blocking system which is arranged on said bogie and which contains a first and a second shaped element, wherein the first shaped element is a roller, preferably an idle roller; an actuating system for modifying the distance between the two shaped elements, for defining an intercepting position and a gripping position of the strip; and an element for detaching the strip from the coil provided on the first shaped element. A relative method of unwinding and inspecting a metal strip is also described, in particular used to check the state of wear of rolling cylinders used for producing the inspected strip.

In a printing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, it is possible to inspect an image of a printed product where an image is printed accurately without scratching a print medium as the printed product. In the printing apparatus, first, a reading unit reads the image on the print medium conveyed by a conveyance unit, and a fixing unit fixes the print medium to a reading area by the reading unit. Then, control is performed so as to stop conveyance by the conveyance unit and fix the print medium by the fixing unit at the time of image reading, and release fixing of the print medium by the fixing unit and resume conveyance by the conveyance unit if the image reading is complete.

To carry out accurate defect inspection over a wide area, a defect inspection device (1) includes: a radiation source section (2) configured to emit an electromagnetic wave (4) to a separator roll (10); and a sensor section (3) configured to detect the electromagnetic wave (4) that the radiation source section (2) has emitted to the separator roll (10), the sensor section (3) being configured to detect the electromagnetic wave (4) before and after the separator roll is moved relative to the radiation source section (2).

A method and a device for monitoring a post print processing machine through which printed products are successively transported. An image recording device is assigned to the post print processing machine and connected to a computer unit for recording during each operating cycle an image series with at least two images of a printed product, spaced apart by a time interval. The images of the image series are transmitted to the computer unit and the images are displayed in real time on a display device that is connected to the computer unit.

The present invention relates to systems and methods for calculating the additional local stretching of a moving web through a converting process in order, during rewinding, to find the position of defects in the web that were identified during winding and stopping the web with the web defect close to or at a defect correcting station. The method comprises, during rewinding of the web, the steps of detecting position markers (PM(n)) applied during winding of the web (5), measuring the distance between the position markers, calculating the additional local stretching between the position markers occurring during rewinding, applying the calculated additional local stretching to the known position of a following web defect to determine an estimated position of that web defect in the rewinding web. A method for correcting a web defect comprises the step of subsequently stopping the web with the web defect at, or close to, a defect repairing station (38).

A paper sheet handling apparatus includes: a conveyance path on which a bundle of paper sheets is conveyed; and a detector including a plurality of ultrasonic wave sensors, which is arranged on the conveyance path, and detecting presence or absence of a foreign substance, which is mixed in the bundle of paper sheets by the plurality of ultrasonic wave sensors. The detector causes the plurality of ultrasonic wave sensors to respectively irradiate, with ultrasonic waves, a plurality of positions on a paper surface of the bundle of paper sheets, which is conveyed along the conveyance path, and detects the presence or absence of the foreign substance based on reflected waves of the ultrasonic waves from the plurality of positions.

The present invention relates to a system (200) and computer implemented method for monitoring the performance of at least one winding spool (120) in the reel section (100) of a paper machine, by detecting a unique identification code, ID, associated with the winding spool (120) from a marker (130) on the winding spool (120); identifying the winding spool (120) based on the unique identification code, ID; determining at least one winding spool performance parameter for the identified winding spool (120) based on measurements from at least one sensor (160); and determining if there is a failure of the performance of the identified winding spool (120) based on if the determined at least one winding spool performance parameter fulfils a requirement indicative of failure of the performance of the winding spool (120). The invention further includes a computer program comprising software for executing the method, a non-volatile data carrier, and a paper machine comprising the system.