Electrophotography – Diagnostics – Document handling
Reexamination Certificate
2002-01-16
2003-12-09
Beatty, Robert (Department: 2852)
Electrophotography
Diagnostics
Document handling
Reexamination Certificate
active
06661978
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic printing system that performs printer dynamic job recovery without any loss in job integrity. More particularly, the invention relates to an electronic printing system that ensures warranted performance of a customer print job through monitoring of variable data integrity identifiers and image quality attributes during print job production.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic printing systems, including printers and reprographic devices such as digital copiers are known. In electronic printers, information forming documents to be printed are provided in electronic form to the printer. This electronic information can come from many sources, including, for example, a scanner, created by a software program, retrieved from a storage medium, or supplied from a computer or computer network. In electronic reprographic printing systems, a document or series of documents comprising at least one print job are successively scanned. Upon scanning of the documents, image signals are obtained and electronically stored. The signals are then read out successively and transferred to a printer for formation of the images on paper. Once a document is scanned, it can be printed any number of times or processed in any number of ways (e.g., words deleted or added, image magnified or reduced, etc.). If a plurality of documents comprise a job which is scanned, the processing or manipulation of the scanned documents can include deletion of one or more documents, reordering of the documents into a desired order, or addition of a previously or subsequently scanned document or documents. The printing or processing can be relatively synchronous with scanning, or asynchronous after scanning. If asynchronous, a time interval exists between scanning and printing or processing. The system can then accumulate a number of scanned jobs in the system memory for subsequent processing or printing. The order of the jobs to be printed may be different from the order of jobs as scanned depending on the priority of the jobs and the desires of the operator for increasing productivity or through-put and decreasing printer or scanner down-time.
For a variety of reasons, the printed job produced by the electronic printing system may have a lack of integrity. There have been limited attempts to remedy the presence of print jobs with questionable integrity. One known prior art system, U.S. Pat. No. 5,179,410 assigned to Xerox Corporation, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, achieves automatic job recovery from limited integrity failures.
In particular, the '410 patent teaches a method and apparatus for dynamic job recovery that includes the steps: automatically detecting the presence of a printed sheet having an image thereon with a relative loss of integrity; automatically purging specified sheets to a specified location upon detection; awaiting delivery of the purged sheets at the specified location; and initiating a dynamic job recovery as soon as all specified sheets have been delivered, this last step being performed without cycling down and without operator intervention. Integrity failures disclosed in the '410 patent include those caused by a general system fault, a Raster Output Scanner fault causing a failure to image properly (video image loss), paper misfeed or misregistration, and a lack of communication between the Raster Output Scanner and control system (also resulting in video image loss).
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
While limited job recovery can be performed using known systems, the uses of such are limited to basic system faults, and not specifically pertaining to variable data jobs, the integrity of which cannot fully be appreciated from basic system fault sensors.
There is a need for a dynamic job recovery system for an electronic printing system that provides warranted performance by monitoring and ensuring variable data content integrity and consistent output appearance by closely controlling image quality and content integrity.
The systems and methods of the invention provide an electronic printing system which performs job recovery from variable data job integrity faults without requiring operator attention. Variable data job integrity in this context includes ensuring images on the print job pages for static documents are valid and that each unique document page has the correct contents of variable data.
Various embodiments of the systems and methods of the invention also provide an electronic printing system which performs job recovery by sensing integrity indicators and performing dynamic job recovery when such indicators suggest image quality performance or variable data content that is improper.
Various exemplary embodiments of the systems and methods of the invention also provide an electronic printing system that maintains output appearance by monitoring image quality attributes during customer job processing and performs job recovery upon sensing of a warranted performance problem, such as an image quality parameter being below a desired standard.
Exemplary embodiments of the systems and methods of the invention are provided with one or more warranted performance sensors that sense job integrity indicators.
Various exemplary embodiments of the systems and methods of the invention may include one or more warranted performance sensors that sense individual sheet glyphs.
Various exemplary embodiments of the systems and methods of the invention may include one or more warranted performance sensors that sense glyphs or color patches in interpage zones of the marking engine.
Various exemplary systems and methods of the invention may provide job recovery from various image quality attribute or integrity faults, such as, for example, color-to-color registration error, color uniformity being out-of-range, color stability being out-of-range, page content integrity fault, paper feed timing mismatch with delivery of image data, double feed, or other attributes indicative of the integrity and quality of the contents being printed for a particular sheet of a customer print job.
Exemplary systems and methods of the invention also provide an electronic reprographic system which performs job recovery by redirecting all sheets of questionable variable data content integrity or image quality to a purge destination and recovering to the correct sheet in the job without requiring any operator attention.
Exemplary systems and methods of the invention provide an electronic reprographic system that provides warranted performance and automated job recovery during processing of a customer print job by: monitoring the performance of a particular attribute indicative of one of image quality and variable data content integrity, preferably with real-time control, with one or more warranted performance sensors while in a customer print job mode; continuing processing of the print job if all attributes are within desired specifications; executing a warranted performance fault action if one or more attributes are out of range; diverting print sheets in progress to a purge tray (those with compromised integrity or quality and upstream incomplete sheets); initiating a diagnostic mode without machine cycle down to identify and correct sources of the fault; and initiating automatic job recovery if possible upon completion of diagnostic testing to resume customer print job where it left off to provide a complete print job with warranted performance without operator intervention.
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