Collecting and stacking apparatus

Apparatus for collecting tickets cut from ticket stock, and for stacking these tickets in a horizontal array. Tickets are collected and oriented to stacking position by a vacuum transport belt assembly, and uniformly aligned by a horizontal stacker. The transport assembly is mounted on a housing which includes a vacuum drum to maintain ticket engagement with the transport belts, as the belts traverse a path having a horizontal to vertical orientation about the top and front of the housing. The stacker is mounted perpendicular to the front base of the housing and incorporates a stacking surface of rollers extending the length of, and parallel to the base of a side plate. The rollers are driven in a direction which, advantageously, positions tickets which may be of varying length against the side plate. Stacker infeed disks are mounted on the transport terminus roller in a unitary arrangement which both releases tickets from the transport and feeds tickets to the stacker, to improve processing efficiency. A friction-loaded back stop moveable along the stacking axis maintains successively fed tickets in an orderly array, due to cooperation of the stacking rollers and infeed disks. This arrangement enables continuous stacking operation, and reduces stacking apparatus sensitivity to variations in ticket size and composition.