APPARATUS FOR RETURNING SIGNATURE

PURPOSE:To surely return signatures inferior to gathering to respective feeder parts by providing an image processing means taking in the image drawn on the signature to output the same as image data and a control means collating the image data with the image data of a memory means to output a return order to a signature transfer means. CONSTITUTION:The signatures 1a supplied from feeders 2a-2d are fed while laminated and the thickness of the signatures 1a... is detected by a gathering inspection apparatus 8 and an abnormal laminate 1 is detached from a line B to be transferred to the place under a television camera 3. The television camera 3 takes the images of the discrimination marks applied to the signatures 1a to transmit the same to an image processor 4 which in turn applies image processing to the taken images to transmit image data to a CPU 5. The CPU 5 compares and collates the taken-in image with the image data related to the discrimination marks of all of the signatures 1a in an image data memory 6 to index which of the signatures the image data from the image processor 4 belong to and outputs the feeder of the signature concerned to a transfer means 7 which in turn returns the signature to the feeder concerned.