PS960 - Paper Handling & Quality Approach

Paper Handling

Efficient and Effective

The seconds wasted on clearing paper jams can add significantly to the schedule in large-scale data collection exercises.  If an exception occurs it is imperative that it is both detected and resolved as quickly as possible.  The PS960 has been designed with an open paper path to allow for quick and easy resolution of transport issues.  Its aim is to ensure overall throughput is maintained at the highest possible levels.  Similarly, consumable items, such as the rubber transport wheels or carriage printer ink are easily accessible and user-replaceable, without any need for downtime.

Doubles Detection and Removal System

The design of the doubles detector has been proven by DRS over many years and guarantees two pieces of paper will never be drawn into the reader and scanned at the same time.  This is very important as it reduces the need for costly and time-consuming corrective actions later in the process.

The PS960 not only detects double feeds instantly, but it also automatically refeeds the sheets through the reader using the built-in doubles removal system. This is a mechanism that simply pulls double feeds back into the input hopper and rescans.  This further improves throughput by ensuring a reader is not sat idle waiting for a busy operator to remove double sheets and refeed them.

High Capacity

A high capacity input hopper and primary output stacker reduce the amount of loading and unloading of forms.  The second and third stackers are used for application specific purposes and ensure that the main processing can continue at speed.  The hopper and stackers are adjustable for a range of paper sizes and ensure the straightest possible stacks are collected.  This helps retain the forms in excellent condition should further processing be required.

Quality Approach

Images

The PS960 boasts an impressive array of sophisticated features to ensure consistent, high quality images are captured. It typically employs 200dpi Contact Image Sensors using red illumination.  This supports OMR capabilities by providing the 'dropout' colour required for OMR forms, and also delivers excellent greyscale images for standard imaging applications.

Quality checks are applied in real time as each page is processed within the reader.  The aim is to ensure data correction is eliminated wherever possible and that quality issues are detected and resolved at source.  The reader will detect problems like image skew, torn forms and dirt on the read-head and this is reported to the scanning application so that the form can be out-sorted for a rescan, or separate exception processing.

Dynamic Normalisation

Dynamic Normalisation ensures the background of a form is clean and white while protecting foreground content such as faint marks and writing.  This standard feature ensures text and images are always of the best possible contrast and quality.  In addition, a clean white background will compress far better than an image that has not been processed this way, thus reducing total data storage needs and bandwidth requirements.

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