Patent 8939274 was granted and assigned to Xante Corporation on January, 2015 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An envelope feeder for a printer having two aligned conveyors moving at different speeds is disclosed. An upstream conveyor moves a backwards slanted procession of envelopes having aligned upper edges onto an inline downstream conveyor that accelerates the envelopes along a curved upper edge so that by the time any single envelope arrives at the printer ingestion or feed slot, the envelope is almost completely flat yet supported upwards slightly so that the pickup roller of the printer can easily and reliably ingest the envelope for processing. Due to the speed of the downstream conveyor, envelopes are continually and reliably presented to the printer to avoid printer stalls. The configuration reduces the amount of skill and operating labor required to establish a high-speed envelope feed source for high-speed printing.