Have you ever wondered how your paper folding machine works? Most users figure that you simply put the sheets into the machine press a button and they come out the other side neatly folded. However, things are not always that simple. At each step of the folding process it is possible for things to go wrong. This article will help you to understand the steps that your folder goes through to handle your documents. It will also address some of the common problems that can occur at each step.
The first step to folding your documents is to place them into the machine. You simply place a stack of paper into the feed tray of the machine and make sure that the stack of sheets is square and jogged together. You will want to make sure that the sheets are being fed into the machine squarely. If the sheets are even slightly skewed, the folds produced by the machine may be crooked. If you are using sheets that have been printed by a digital device, you may also want to run them through a jogger first to ensure that the static of the sheets is eliminated (a can of static eliminator may also help if you are having static problems).
Folding Trays
After you have placed your sheets into the machine you will be ready to get started. Once you have pressed the button to activate the folding machine a rubber roller will pick up the sheets. If you sheets are too glossy or made from heavy card stocks this roller may have difficulty picking them up. For those types of applications, air feed folders are available. Air feed folders use bursts of compressed air and air powered suction cups to pick up individual sheets and feed them into the machine. However, these folders tend to be extremely expensive and can be somewhat difficult to configure and to maintain.
Once your sheets have been grabbed by the pickup feed, they travel on towards the machine's fold rollers which ensure the paper stays on the straight and narrow. Like the pickup feed rollers, these ones consist of rubber, although they're smaller than the other rollers and thus, can wear out as time goes by due to the accumulation of paper dust and other debris. Luckily, it's easy to clean and maintain these rollers: all you do is wipe the rollers down with water and mild soap, and things should be good again. (A caveat: be sure to unplug the machine before cleaning the rollers unless you want to get electrocuted.)
Now that your paper has been through the rollers, it will hit the machine's fold plates. This is where the paper is actually folded. After it's fed into the plates, the paper will hit a barrier known as a paper stop and it will get turned around, which folds the paper. A lot of the more expensive paper folders have automated fold plates, but if your machine is a lower-end model, chances are you'll have the adjust the paper stop yourself. This isn't too difficult to do, but it's important to make sure the plate is square...unless you want your documents to be folded crooked.
Now, there's one more place your paper needs to go: the output tray. After your documents have been folded, this is their final destination. There are a couple of different types of output trays. The first is a bin-style tray. These trays don't take up very much room (a plus if you're working in a small space), but you might find that your papers get mashed together in the bin if you're folding a lot of pieces or letters. Another type of tray is the conveyor belt, which is much simpler to use, but they take up a fair amount of space, which is kind of lame if you don't have much room in which to work.