Patent ID: 7482542

Claim:
A mail article feeder device for a postage meter comprising: a housing constructed to support a weighing cell, said weighing cell constructed to generate a weighing signal; a receiver tray including longitudinal and transverse walls for jogging mail articles, and suitable for receiving a stack of mail articles; an automatic extractor for ejecting the mail articles from the stack one by one, and wherein the automatic extractor and the receiver tray are carried by the weighing cell, and wherein the device further includes; an intrusion detector for detecting operator intervention on the receiver tray and generating a signal indicative of said intrusion; and a processor for calculating the weight of each extracted mail article as a function of weighing signals delivered by the weighing cell before and after extraction of said mail article by said automatic extractor, and wherein the processor is adapted to receive the signal from the intrusion detector and in response to said intrusion detector signal, interrupt the weight calculation; wherein said intrusion detector comprises three optical cells disposed at each of the outside corners of said receiver tray so as to form a triangular protection surface in front of the mail articles, the optical cells including an emitter and a receiver.