BILL DISPENSE CONTROL SYSTEM

Abstract: In a bill issuing machine, a designated denomination and amount of bills can be dispensed from a plurality of bill cartridges (8-11). All bills dispensed are fed to an issue gate (17) which is automatically opened to the operator when any denomination of bills is exhausted during the dispensing operation, the operation is continued through dispensing the other designated denominations of bills. Then, the issue gate is not automatically opened but kept closed to have the operator manually open it, thereby indicating to the operator that an insufficient number of bills was dispensed. Also, the missing amount can be displayed to the operator.

Description: The invention relates to a bill dispensing machine according to the generic part of claim 1. A bill dispensing machine of that kind is known from US-A-3.828.166. In that document a cash register is disclosed containing a storage compartment with an empty-contact device for each denomination of banknotes and providing bill feed- and take-out means. In EP-A-34.502 a banknote access station is disclosed having a pivoted outlet flap for closing the access to a front aperture. The outlet flap is normally locked and is only released for enabling a customer to remove banknotes. For that purpose the customer has to lift the outlet flap, because the flap will always fall under the influence of gravity into its closed position. Another bank note dispensing apparatus of a conventional construction is disclosed in US-A-4.321.671. Generally, a cash issuing machine operated by a teller, particularly a bill dispenser, has a plurality of cartridges each corresponding to a different denomination. The requested bill amount, which is inputted by the teller through a keyboard responding to a customer's request is generally checked on the balance etc. by a host computer. If the dispensing is allowable, the host computer provides a dispensing command to cause some denomination of bills corresponding to the requested amount to be successively fed out from the cartridges and then to be stacked in a temporary store in a bill feed path. After all of the bills corresponding to the requested amount are fed into the temporary store, they are collectively fed to a take-out port and, when a gate of the port is automatically opened, they are taken out by the teller to be handed to the customer. However, if a cartridge does not contain a sufficient amount of bills and therefor cannot feed the bills during the feed-out operation, the operation of the bill dispenser stops to suppress the subsequent feed-out operation and calls a teller's attention to fill up the exhausted cartridge. Accordingly, the teller or a person in charge can fill up the cartridge. In this case, the insufficient amount of bills stacked in the temporary store are collectively transferred into a reject box. At the completion of the fill-up operation, the above-mentioned bill feed-out operation is restarted from the beginning. As described above, when the bill in a cartridge is exhausted during the bill feed-out operation, all of the operations until then are cancelled and must be repeated from the beginning after the bill filling-up. Thus, the customer may be kept waiting at the teller counter for a long time. This is undesirable for the bank. This invention permits dispensing a required amount of bills without keeping the customer waiting even if a cartridge is exhausted, and also prevents the teller from handing an insufficient amount of bills to the customer in error. Starting from this point it is an object of the invention to provide a dispensing machine that prevents an operator to handle an insufficient number of bills to a customer in error. This object is settled by the features of the characterizing part of claim 1. According to the invention a controllable gate is provided that normally is opened in the case of a successful completion of the feed-out operation. But in the case of an uncompleted feed-out operation, that means when one or more bills are not fed out, the gate remains closed. Due to the closed gate the operator becomes aware of the fact that the feed-out operation was not successful. In consequence the operator can remove all other bills out of the dispenser machine by manually opening the gate and then can take the missing bills for example out of a safe. As a result, although the dispenser machine fed out an insufficient number of bills, the operator makes no error in handling the correct number of bills to the customer. An embodiment of this invention is described below in connection with the appended drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a block diagram of a banking system containing the bill dispenser that embodies this invention; Figure 2 schematically shows the bill feed system in the bill dispenser; Figure 3 is a perspective view showing the construction of the take-out port of the bill dispenser that embodies this invention; and Figure 4 is a flow chart illustrating the bill dispense control system of this invention. Figure 1 is a block diagram of a banking system including a bill dispenser which can use this invention. A host computer 1 installed in the head office of a bank stores the deposit files of customers who have accounts with this bank, checks the balance of a customer in response to request for dispensing bills that is transmitted from a keyboard 4 in a branch through a controller 2 over a communication line 3 and, if the dispensing is permissible, sends a dispensing command to the controller 2. The controller 2 indicates on a display 5 the denominations and the numbers of the bills corresponding to the amount to be dispensed. The teller may change the combination of the denomination and number of the bills according to the wish of the customer. The number of bills on each denomination as determined above are sent to a bill dispenser 6 and a coin dispenser 7 from the controller 2 by a command. Because these dispensers do dispense exactly the amount of cash specified by the command, the teller can hand the dispensed cash to the customer as is without checking. Figure 2 shows the bill feed paths schematically in the above-mentioned bill dispenser 6. It has four bill cartridges, each of which can hold any denomination of bills up to a predetermined amount (e.g. 200 bills) respectively. For example, a cartridge 8 can hold ten-thousand-yen bills, a cartridge 9 five-thousand-yen bills, cartridges 10 and 11 one-thousand-yen and five-hundred-yen bills respectively. In addition, another cartridge for one-thousand-yen or ten-thousand-yen bills which is frequently dispensed may be provided instead of the cartridge for five-hundred-yen bills. Any combination of cartridges for any denominations may be chosen. Each cartridge has a mechanism operable to feed out the specified amount of bills. The bill(s) fed from each cartridge passes through a feeding path 14, which consists of belts or rollers, and is stacked in a temporary reservoir or store 15. When all of the bills to be dispensed are fed out from the cartridges an no error condition such as overlapped bills or torn bills is detected by a sensor 16, all of the bills in the temporary store 15 are collectively transferred to a take-out port 17. If an error condition is detected, all of the bills in the temporary store are transferred into a reject box 18, and the operation for dispensing the bills is repeated for the transaction. Each cartridge is also provided with a device 13 for detecting the bill exhaustion in the cartridge. If any of the detecting devices 13 detects an empty cartridge, the bill feed-out operation from the associated cartrigde is immediately stopped. Figure 3 shows the construction of the take-out port 17. While a gate 31 is shown in its open state in Figure 3, it is usually in an upright position, namely the closed state. When the bills are transferred onto the bill receiving plate 32 of the take-out port from the temporary store, the belt 33 is driven by a motor (not shown) to rotate a shaft 34 counter-clockwise to open the gate 31 to the illustrated position. Then, the teller can take out the bills and hand them to the customer. When the driving force is removed from the belt 33, the gate 31 is returned to its closed state by a spring 35. Also, when the belt 33 is not driven even if the bills are fed to the take-out port, the teller may open the gate 31 by hand to take out the bills, or may open the gate by driving the belt 33 through the operation of a push button or the like (not shown) to take out the bills. Now it is assumed that the bill dispenser 6 is requested by the controller 2 to dispense one-hundred- thousand-yen, for example, in seven ten-thousand-yen bills, two five-thousand-yen bills, eighteen one-thousand-yen bills, and four five-hundred-yen bills. The bill dispenser 6 feeds out seven bills from the cartridge 8 for ten-thousand-yen bills, and then two bills from the cartridge 9 for five-thousand-yen bills to the temporary store 15. Further eighteen bills begin to be fed out from the cartridge 10 for one-thousand-yen bills. For example, if the bills are exhausted when fifteen bills are fed out, the bill dispenser detects it, stops the feed-out operation in the cartridge 10, and informs the teller of the bill exhaustion by turning on a lamp indicating that the cartridge is empty. However, the operation of the bill dispenser is continued to feed out four bills from the next cartridge for five-hundred-yen bills to the temporary store 13. When the feeding-out from the specified cartridges are completed, the bills stacked in the temporary store 13 are collectively transferred to the take-out port 17 but the gate 31 does not open because the bill exhaustion has been detected in the cartridge 10. In addition, the bill dispenser 6 sends to the controller 2 the signals representing information on the denominations and numbers of the bills actually fed out, namely seven bills actually fed out, namely seven bills from the cartridge 8, two from the cartridge 9, fifteen from the cartridge 10 and four from the cartridge 11. The controller 2 compares the denominations and numbers of the bills to be dispensed with those of the bills actually fed out and, when it is detected that the feeding-out of the bills comes short by three one-thousand-yen bills, the controller issues to the display 5 a command for causing it to display the denominations and numbers for the shortage. Then, the teller opens the gate 31 by hand to take out the bills fed out there and also takes out bills corresponding to the shortage displayed on the display 5 from a safe to hand them together to the customer. The above operation is controlled by a microprocessor in the bill dispenser 6. Figure 4 is a flow chart generally illustrating its operating steps. According to this invention, the teller can easily become aware of the bill exhaustion in the cartridge because the gate of the take-out port does not open automatically when such a problem occurs, making an error in handling the wrong amount of bills to the customer can be prevented.

Claims: A bill dispensing machine with a plurality of cartridges (8 to 11) each containing one denomination of bills, with an exhaustion detector (13) in each cartridge, with bill feed-out means (12 to 16) for feeding out a specified number of bills from each cartridge, and with a bill take-out mechanism (17) for receiving the bills fed out from each cartridge and for manually removing the bills by an operator, characterized in, that said take-out mechanism is provided with a controllable gate (31) for controlling the access to said take-out mechanism, said gate being normally opened automatically by drive means upon successful completion of the bill feed-out operation, but remaining closed when any of said exhaustion detectors senses an empty cartridge and in consequense the feed-out operation is uncompleted thereby indicating to the operator that an insufficient number of bills was fed out, said gate being manually openable by the operator for removing the insufficient number of bills. The bill dispensing machine of claim 1, characterized in, that a display (5) is provided for indicating to the operator the missing number of bills in case that an empty cartridge was sensed by any of said exhaustion detectors. The bill dispensing machine of claim 1 or 2, characterized in, that upon detection of an empty cartridge the feed-out means stops to feed out from said empty cartridge and starts to feed out from the next specified cartridge. The bill dispensing machine of one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in, that a temporary store (15) is provided for receiving the bills fed out from said cartridges. The bill dispensing machine of claim 4, characterized in, that a reject container (18) is provided into which bills can be fed from said temporary store when an error is detected.

Inventors: KANOH, HIROSHI, TSUKAMOTO, KENJI
Applicants: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
Application year: 1983
Main classification: G07D1
IPC codes: G07D1, G07D11, B65H7