High-capacity automatic playing card shuffler
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A card shuffling machine for shuffling playing cards into a shuffled card collection, comprising:
- two card holding bins each adapted to receive an unshuffled card stack formed by a plurality of playing cards, each card holding bin further including a gateway opening through which cards are removed from the unshuffled card stack;
a confluence chamber located between the two card holding bins, the gateway openings of the two card holding bins facing one another on opposite sides of the confluence chamber;
a card propelling mechanism positioned adjacent to the gateway opening of each card holding bin and operative to contact a bottom card from the unshuffled card stack and propel at least the bottom card through the gateway opening into the confluence chamber in a trajectory which intersects the trajectory of the bottom card propelled from the other gateway opening of the other card holding bin; and
wherein;
the gateway opening and the card propelling mechanism limit the number of cards that can be simultaneously propelled at one time from the card holding bin to a random number of cards which is greater than one card and equal to or less than a predetermined maximum number of cards.
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Abstract
Playing cards from two unshuffled card stacks are interleaved or shuffled in random by propelling the cards in two intersecting trajectories and interleaving the cards into a single shuffled card collection at the intersection point of the trajectories. Two card holding bins receive the unshuffled card stacks of playing cards and preferably a random number of cards are removed at a time. The interleaved cards settle downward onto an elevator assembly to form the shuffled card collection.
290 Citations
32 Claims
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1. A card shuffling machine for shuffling playing cards into a shuffled card collection, comprising:
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two card holding bins each adapted to receive an unshuffled card stack formed by a plurality of playing cards, each card holding bin further including a gateway opening through which cards are removed from the unshuffled card stack; a confluence chamber located between the two card holding bins, the gateway openings of the two card holding bins facing one another on opposite sides of the confluence chamber; a card propelling mechanism positioned adjacent to the gateway opening of each card holding bin and operative to contact a bottom card from the unshuffled card stack and propel at least the bottom card through the gateway opening into the confluence chamber in a trajectory which intersects the trajectory of the bottom card propelled from the other gateway opening of the other card holding bin; and
wherein;the gateway opening and the card propelling mechanism limit the number of cards that can be simultaneously propelled at one time from the card holding bin to a random number of cards which is greater than one card and equal to or less than a predetermined maximum number of cards. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32)
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Specification