The act of dispensing currency is an important and basic operation in many transactions of financial and business institutions. As financial transactions become automated and customers interact directly with the system, without teller assistance, currency dispensing must also be automated. This is particularly true with automated teller terminals located at remote sites where no human assistance is possible. In addition to those automated financial terminals, there have been limited, but effective, installations of currency dispensers at teller windows to speed the flow of customers. Application of efficient, cost-effective currency dispensing in high volume situations, such as at the supermarket checkout counter to dispense paper money as a companion to automated coin dispensers, has great potential if the cost of the unit is reasonably low.
The purpose of a currency or bill dispenser is to provide means of storing one or more denominations of paper currency and feeding a prescribed number of bills on command. The accuracy and speed of the feeding operation largely depends on the means of removing single bills from the stack of each bill denomination. Bill dispensers currently being manufactured generally employ one of two basic principles in removing a bill from the stack. One means employs a loose stack in contact with a rubber-covered friction wheel, belt, or drum. Movement of the high-friction surface, such as by rotation of the drum, will drag the bill which is in contact with the surface from the stack whereas the inter-bill friction will hold the remaining bills in the stack. The other principle employs a vacuum or suction pick-up which causes the first bill in the stack to adhere to a moving member, thereby dragging it from the stack, again allowing the remaining bills to stay with the stack. Friction rolls or transport belts then move the individual bill past checking stations and out of the machine (or into a reject hopper). Both methods often employ a reverse-moving friction surface or stationary friction drag means in contact with the back of the moving bill to further insure that only one bill is removed from the stack at a time. Reasonably good performance has been obtained from machines employing either of the above principles. However, the design typically becomes relatively complex, requiring many parts, and is critical in certain adjustments because of the need for close balance of various frictional forces.
Bill dispensers are employed at present primarily in free-standing automatic teller terminals, and in in-lobby terminals. They also have potential utility in back-office money counting operations of business establishments. To date, they have not gained wide acceptance in many applications because of their high cost, large size and limited reliability. Even in the relatively complex systems, such as automated teller terminals, bill dispensers represent a significant portion of the total cost and size of the machine.
A record member feeding device comprises an important part of a bill dispenser for feeding one bill at a time from a stack or other group of bills. Record member feeding devices also have numerous other important uses in addition to employment in a bill dispenser machanism.