Sheet-material associating – Associating or disassociating – With control indicia
Reexamination Certificate
1998-01-20
2001-05-01
Ellis, Christopher P. (Department: 3651)
Sheet-material associating
Associating or disassociating
With control indicia
C270S052160, C270S052290, C270S001020, C270S001030
Reexamination Certificate
active
06224048
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to the field of document assembly systems. More particularly, the invention relates to a document finishing system for the controlled assembly of mixed format documents.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Document finishing systems are used for a variety of printing, compiling, and binding applications.
J. Soler, K. Moore, D. Miller, and R. Eisemann,
Apparatus and Method of Controlling Interposition of Sheet in a Stream of Imaged Substrates
, U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,969 (Feb. 6, 1996) disclose a technique for controlling the interposition of one or more special sheets into a stream of regular imaged substrates. In one example, the insertion of special sheets is determined by preset time intervals, which can be adjusted to accommodate the timing of hardware, such as printers. In another example, the interposition of a special insert sheet with the stream of imaged substrates is maintained by comparing the distance between a special insert sheet fed to the stream and an adjacent regular imaged substrate with a predefined tolerance, and adjusting the feed times of subsequent special insert sheets. While Soler et al. disclose complicated time and distance spacing between special sheets and a stream of regular substrates, they fail to disclose a comprehensive solution to providing an information map to compile an entire hybrid document.
D. Platteter and J. Carter,
System Architecture for Attaching and Controlling Muftiple Feeding and Finishing Devices to a Reproduction Machine
, U.S. Pat. No. 5,629,775 (May 13, 1997) disclose an electronic image processing apparatus which includes a marking machine, a source of copy sheets, a controller, and a plurality of resources, in which each of the resources includes an associated processor for storing data related to the operational timing of the associated resource. While Platteter et al. disclose a system architecture for attaching multiple finishing devices to a reproduction machine, they fail to provide a document finishing device for assembling hybrid documents originating from a plurality of printers.
C. Conrad, R. Coons, and T. Cherry,
Sheet Inserter and Methods of Inserting Sheets into a Continuous Stream of Sheets
, U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,511 (Dec. 21, 1993) disclose a sheet inserter that “inserts special insert sheets into a continuous stream of sheets. The insert sheet and the continuous stream of sheets are then conveyed to a final destination, where the sheets are compiled into a stack. While Conrad et al. disclose the insertion of special sheets within a continuous stream of sheets, they fail to disclose the use of a mixed format finishing device that collates sheets from a number of sources in response to self-contained instructions residing on one of the sheets.
The disclosed prior art systems and methodologies thus provide basic document finishing systems, but fail to provide a mixed format document finishing device in which documents to be compiled include self-contained instructions which are used to compile the document. The development of such a mixed format finishing device would constitute a major technological advance.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A hybrid mixed format document that contains document portions prepared by different format sources, such as both black and white and colored pages, prepared by separately printing the colored pages on a color printer, and the black and white pages on a black and white printer. The two document portions are then put in separate locations within a mixed format finishing device. One of the document portions, for example the black and white document portion, includes a cover sheet that provides encoded information, which tells the finishing device how to merge the two document portions into a complete publication. One advantage of the mixed format finishing device is that those pages that contain only text may be printed on a faster, and less costly black and white printer. In a preferred embodiment, the cover sheet controls the document merging process in such a manner that if one document is misprinted or mismerged, the mismerged document may be shuttled aside and merging may continue with the next complete document set.
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Electronics For Imaging, Inc.
Ellis Christopher P.
Glenn Michael A.
Hendricks Don
Mackey Patrick
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