Electrophotography – Document handling – Original
Utility Patent
1999-12-15
2001-01-02
Moses, Richard (Department: 2852)
Electrophotography
Document handling
Original
C399S374000, C399S363000
Utility Patent
active
06169873
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to paper handling, and more specifically to paper feeding and scanning of an original sheet placed onto a scanning device for a scanner or copier. More specifically it relates to automated sheet feeding of original sheets in a paper handling machine.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to paper handling. The paper handler manipulates sheet media which may include paper or other materials which have or receive a printed image. Unless a particular process is specific for paper as such, paper handling can be used with any appropriate form of sheet media.
Scanners and copiers often include the feature of automatic paper feeders for originals. In a simplified form, the automatic paper feeder feeds sheets which must be either placed face down or face up in the paper feeder. If the original is placed in the wrong face up or face down orientation, the wrong side of the sheet gets copied on single sided copies. The result is a reproduction of a blank sheet. When using a single sided scanner in the process of making copies, the function of placing paper into the scanner's automatic document feeder requires that the printed side of the document is oriented toward the scanner. If a single sided scanner is used with a two sided feeder to scan a dual sided original source, the side of interest must also be oriented correctly.
In paper feeding, “sheets” are considered to have two sides. An image is the printed material on one side of a sheet, although it is also possible to have a side of a sheet with no printed material in which case that side of the sheet would have a “blank image”. A “page” is normally used to refer to one side of a sheet. A document may have one or more pages and is referred to as “simplex” if the images are printed on one side of each sheet and “duplex” if images are printed on both sides of the sheets.
In many cases, a “duplex” print job or other paper handling job may include individual sheets which have images on one side of the sheet only, although in other cases mixed simplex and duplex sheets may occur in a single print job because the print job is an assembly of different documents. The occurrence of simplex and duplex sheets in a single print job is most likely to occur when the print job includes a collection of sheets from different sources, although there are cases in which documents from a single source have mixed one-sided and two-sided sheets. Someone scanning such a paper handling job may wish to retain the duplex and simplex combination of the original or convert the entire job to simplex or duplex documents.
An “original” refers to a document or set of sheets which are to be scanned for their image content. The present invention concerns itself with “hard copy” originals, so the original would be in the form of an image on paper or other sheet media. In the sense of this invention, a “copy” may be in the form of a hard copy or an electronic (digital) copy. For example, if an original is stored electronically, no hard copy may be made, but an electronic copy is created.
The “orientation” of a document may include a face-up and face-down orientation of a stack, as well as top/bottom orientation in which the text of a document reads right side up or upside-down. It is also possible that the order of sheets may be such that the first sheet is on the bottom of a stack and the left sheet is on top, so that the order of pages is 2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, . . . or the inverse of such a sequence ( . . . , 5, 6, 3, 4, 1, 2).
The paper feeder may be simplex or duplex, although for simplicity, it is possible to describe a duplex paper sheet feeder as a “page flipper”. A duplex feeder or a page flipper is a feeder which physically turns a page from face up to face down or vice-versa.
If two-sided scanning is provided, an “auto select” function in the operating code of the machine would be advantageous. In this manner, faults resulting from wrong face side paper feeding can be corrected without causing the user to have to “fight with” the equipment in order to achieve a desired result. In a broader sense, it would be advantageous if a scanning device is able to correct stack inversion, detect duplex and simplex originals, and limit such detection to predictable patterns so as to speed image processing. The scanning device should perform such functions only when the nature of the paper handling job warranted these features.
In configuring paper handling equipment to provide desired results, it is often the case that adding a feature can, in some cases, increase the difficulty working with the equipment. For example, is a paper feed device is designed to sense two-sided originals would not automatically know whether the user wished to have copies of both sides or only one side. Thus, a feature which would be convenient for someone who intends to automatically detect and copy both sides of a two-sided original may prove to be an inconvenience for someone who wishes to copy only one side.
To complicate this, it is possible that a user may be under the impression that all of the originals are single sided copies, but it turns out that two-sided copies are embedded within the stack. Thus, the ability of paper handling equipment to perform more functions does not always increase convenience for the user. It would be desirable to permit the user to be able to detect such embedded two-sided originals. It would be further advantageous to then allow the user to determine how such two-sided originals are to be handled after they are detected. On the other hand, in many cases the user knows straight away that originals are either simplex or duplex, and so would not wish to scan for mixed simplex/duplex sheets.
There are instances when an original is fed upside down either purposely or accidentally in some instances it is desired to provide an image output which is right side up.
The present invention contemplates providing additional preliminary data interpretation while scanning of an original document prior to final paper handling. This can save some time by evaluating the document to be handled; however the processing itself consumes time. Some prior art copiers will pre-scan a first page for image darkness, but this process substantially increases the time necessary to make the copy. In order to reduce time on multiple sheet jobs, only a first sheet would be scanned and the remainder of sheets are presumed to have the same image sense.
If pages are to be pre-scanned for content, this may increase total scanning time considerably. In some cases this process is desirable because the user is not certain as to the simplex/duplex nature of the originals. In other cases the user is certain whether the originals are simplex or duplex and would not wish to wait for the paper handling machine to verify what the user already knows. It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a paper feeder which can verify status but does not cause undue delay to the user in instances where such verification is not desired. While it is possible to completely scan a document on two sides prior to using the data or reproducing the document, this also causes problems. It is often desired to speed the processing of data by transmitting, reproducing or otherwise manipulating the data prior to completely scanning the entire print job. This particularly becomes an issue where large documents are involved, and to a lesser extent becomes a problem where multiple pages are involved in any size document. On the other hand, there are cases when the user requires such scanning, so that in these cases the user would have to manually scan the sheet for variations in simplex/duplex status of the individual sheets.
When a document is scanned, it is possible for the duplex original to have some pages printed only on a single side. This is fairly common on lead sheets and trailing sheets. For example, if a document has an odd number of page images, the last sheet may be printed on only one side. In other instances, the cover sheet may intentionally be pr
Hewlett--Packard Company
Moses Richard
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