Apparatus and method for improved print output

Abstract

An apparatus and method for producing a stack of documents, each having one or more pages, separated into documents. An input mechanism receives printed sheet material, which is cut by a cutter into document pages having a first dimension and flag sheets having a different dimension. A page laying unit stacks pages corresponding to a document in sequence and interposes flag sheets between successive documents. The direction in which the dimension of pages and flag sheets is different lies transverse to the direction of cutting.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This is the first application filed for the present invention.

TECHNICAL FIELD

[0002] The invention relates to printing and in particular to an apparatus and method for producing a stack of documents that are easily identified and separated.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0003] Retrieving printed documents from a stack of many printed documents often proves to be a difficult and error prone task. Determining where a multi-page document begins and ends in a stack of pages, identifying the individual documents that are stacked in an output tray and separating the desired document is a cumbersome task. The problem is exacerbated with the advent of print servers, in which a number of users may remotely direct a print job to a common server.

[0004] In order to separate print jobs, whether or not sent from different sources, numerous approaches have been attempted. First, cover sheets may be automatically inserted between jobs. Such cover sheets, which have the same dimension as the page sheets, not only demonstrate the beginning (or end) of a print job, but also may identify the particular job by the text printed out on the cover sheet.

[0005] Other approaches have been attempted to ensure that one document is separated from another. For example, the pages comprising a print job may be stapled together. However, the stapling process mutilates the pages of the document, which may not be desirable. Alternatively, successive documents may be stacked at a slightly offset from one another, so that a document may be easily identified. Typically, the output tray is configured to permit successive documents to be positioned at one of two offset positions, so that every second document has the same offset position. While this approach is effective for the purpose of separating out document in the output tray, once a document in the middle of the stack has been removed, the separation of the adjacent document will be lost. Other output trays provide more than two offset positions to avoid such difficulties, however, this introduces considerable additional mechanical complexity to the output path of the printer.

[0006] There is therefore a need for a printing apparatus and method for producing a stack of documents that allows easy identification and separation of documents.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0007] It is an object of the invention to provide a printing apparatus and method for producing a stack of documents that are easily identified and separated into respective documents.

[0008] Accordingly an apparatus is provided for stacking output of a printer. The apparatus comprises an input mechanism for receiving printed sheet material from the printer, a formatter for producing document pages and flag sheets, and a page laying unit for sequentially stacking pages and flag sheets to produce the stack of documents separated by flag sheets. The flag sheets have a different dimension than that of document pages, and thereby facilitate separation and/or identification of the documents.

[0009] The input mechanism preferably comprises a feed mechanism for controlling reception of the printed sheet material from a printer at a cutter. The printer may be a laser-writing printer, and ink-jet printer or a dye-sublimation printer.

[0010] The source of sheet material is preferably a web, and may consist of paper, film, metal, or cloth, that is cut to size by the cutter. The cutter preferably comprises means for cutting consisting of a blade that cuts the printed sheet material under tension, a laser cutter, or opposing blades for shearing the printed sheet material.

[0011] Preferably the dimension of the flag sheet that is different than the respective dimension of the documents pages is in a direction transverse to a direction of cutting of the cutter.

[0012] The page laying unit may be adapted to collate document pages, or sort document pages.

[0013] Also according to the objects of the invention, there is provided a method for identifying pages corresponding to one or more documents from a stack of pages. The method involves receiving printed sheet material, separating the printed sheet material into groups of pages and introducing flag sheets having a different dimension than the corresponding dimension of the pages.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0014] Further features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in combination with the appended drawings, in which:

[0015] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a printing apparatus connected to a computer; and

[0016] FIG. 2 is a schematic block diagram of the printing apparatus shown in FIG. 1.

[0017] It should be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

[0018] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram 100 of a computer 102 connected 104 to a printing apparatus 106. The connection 104 may be a computer network such as an Ethernet implementation; a serial connection such as universal serial bus (USB) or IEEE 1394 cable; a parallel port connection; or a wireless connection such as Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11 lb. The computer 102 preferably includes a print manager 103. A plurality of remote computers 110 (only one shown) may also be communicatively coupled to the computer 102 via a packet switching network such as the Internet 114. Images (not shown) 110 may be transferred from the remote computer 110 via the Internet 114 to the print manager 103 in the computer 102, or may originate in the computer 102.

[0019] FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a preferred embodiment of the printing apparatus 106 shown in FIG. 1. The printing apparatus 106 includes a source of sheet material 204 which is preferably a web 202. The sheet material 204 may be, for example, paper, film, metal, or cloth. The printing apparatus 106 also includes a first feed mechanism 206 for feeding the sheet material 204 from the web 202 to a print engine 208 which may be, for example, a laser-writer or an ink-jet print engine.

[0020] The print engine 208 prints images onto the sheet material 204. The images may be, for example, two or three dimensional images; holographic images; text; or any combination thereof. The print engine 208 may print on either or both sides of the sheet material 204 to produce printed sheet material 212. The printing apparatus 106 has a second feed mechanism 210 for feeding the printed sheet material 212 from the print engine 208 to a cutter 214. The cutter 214 therefore includes a web input mechanism that includes the second feed mechanism 210 for receiving the printed sheet material from the print engine 208.

[0021] The cutter 214 cuts the printed sheet material 212 into sheets 218 of an appropriate size. The cutter 214 may constitute, for example, a blade, a laser or shearing mechanism.

[0022] The printing apparatus 106 also has a third feed mechanism 216 for feeding the sheets 218 from the cutter 214 to a stacker 220.

[0023] The stacker 220 is an embodiment of a page laying unit adapted to lay the sheets 218 into a stack 222 of documents 224. The stacker 220 may be, for example, a mechanism for sorting and/or collating documents; or a tray for receiving pre-sorted/pre-collated documents.

[0024] The printing apparatus 106 may include a processor 230 coupled by connections 235, 246, 248, 250 to monitor or control other aspects of the printing apparatus 106. For example, the processor 230 is coupled by connection 235 to sensor 260, which senses a condition of the web 202, such as a “source empty” condition. The processor 230 is coupled by connection 246 to the print engine 208, whereby the processor 230 may transfer image data to the print engine 208. The processor 230 is coupled by connection 248 to the cutter 214 for controlling the cutter 214 to cut the printed sheet material 212 into sheets 218 in accordance with available data and a predetermined program. Finally, the processor 230 is coupled by connection 250 to the stacker 220 for controlling the operation of stacker 220 or for sensing a condition of the stacker 220 such as a “tray full” condition.

[0025] The printing apparatus 106 also includes a communication interface 232 coupled by a connection 234 to the processor 230 and adapted to communicate with the computer 102 (FIG. 1) via the connection 104, whereby print job information is obtained from the computer 102. The processor 230 is also coupled by a connection 238 to a keypad 236 for a user (not shown) to input commands to the processor 230, and coupled by a connection 242 to a display 240 to permit the user to receive messages generated by the processor 230.

[0026] A memory 244 is also coupled to the processor 230 by a memory bus 252 for intermediate storage and processing of images received from the printer manager 103 (FIG. 1) via the connection 104 and the communication interface 232 before the image data is transferred to the print engine 208.

[0027] The sheets 218 produced by the cutter 214 may be of a first size, such as letter, legal or A4, referred to herein as pages; or a second size having a dimension, such as length or width, different from a corresponding dimension of the first size, referred to herein as flag sheets 226. The dimension of the flag sheets 226 is preferably greater than the respective dimension of the pages.

[0028] The flag sheets 226 separate the pages into logical groupings. An appropriate logical grouping may be a print job, a part of a document, or any other serial set of pages identified by a processor 230. For convenience, such logical groupings are referred to herein collectively as documents 224.

[0029] The printing apparatus 106 produces the stack 222 of documents 224 that are partitioned by flag sheets 226 that facilitate identification and separation of individual documents in the stack 222 and reduce retrieval errors.

[0030] Advantageously, the flag sheets 226 facilitate the identification and/or separation of the documents 224 by a user (not shown). It should be noted that the documents 224 may be copies, unique documents, or any combination of 226 may be identical to one another the two. Also, the flag sheets may have unique printed images to facilitate identifying individual documents 224.

[0031] Preferably, the shape of the pages in a document 224 or of the flag sheet 226 separating the documents 224 is rectangular.

[0032] The use of flag sheets 226 having a different dimension than the corresponding dimension of the pages constituting a document 224 provides a mechanism for easily identifying where a document 224 begins and ends, without mutilating the pages of the document 224, such as is the case with the use of staples. Additionally, the identification of where documents 224 remaining in a document stage 222 begin and end is maintained, even if a document 224 has been retrieved from the middle of the stack 222.

[0033] The embodiments of the invention described above are intended to be exemplary only. The scope of the invention is therefore intended to be limited solely by the scope of the appended claims. For example, it may not be strictly necessary for the printing apparatus 106 to use printed sheet material in a web, which material is cut to length by a cutter. Rather, the printed sheet material may be pre-cut and an appropriate size of printed sheet material used for both the document pages and for the flag sheets. For example, a document consisting of letter-sized pages may be separated by a flag sheet of legal-size dimension. In such a case, the identification of the separating flag sheets may be enhanced by using printed sheet material for the flag sheet having a different colour, texture, thickness or consistency than that used for the pages of the document.

Claims

1. An apparatus for stacking print output, the apparatus comprising:

an input mechanism for receiving printed sheet material from a printer;

a formatter for producing document pages and flag sheets, the flag sheets having a different dimension than that of the pages; and

a page laying mechanism for sequentially stacking pages and flag sheets to produce a stack of documents separated by flag sheets.

2. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein the dimension of the flag sheet is greater than the corresponding dimension of the document pages.

3. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the formatter comprises a cutter for cutting the printed sheet material to produce pages and flag sheets.

4. An apparatus as claimed in claim 3 wherein the dimension of the flag sheet that is different than that of the document pages lies in a direction transverse to a direction of cutting of the cutter.

5. An apparatus as claimed in claim 3 wherein the cutter comprises a blade that cuts the printed sheet material under tension.

6. An apparatus as claimed in claim 3 wherein the cutter comprises a laser.

7. An apparatus as claimed in claim 3 wherein the cutter comprises opposing blades for shearing the printed material.

8. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein the input mechanism is adapted to receive the printed sheet material from a print engine and to provide it to the cutter.

9. An apparatus as claimed in claim 5 adapted to receive printed sheet material in web form.

10. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 adapted to receive printed sheet material in paper form.

11. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 adapted to receive sheet material in film form.

12. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 adapted to receive sheet material in metal form.

13. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 adapted to receive sheet material in cloth form.

14. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein the page laying unit is further adapted to collate document pages.

15. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein the page laying unit is further adapted to sort the document pages and flag pages.

16. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the formatter comprises means for retrieving pre-cut flag sheets for provision to the page laying mechanism.

17. An apparatus as claimed in claim 16, wherein the flag sheets are of different character than the document pages.

18. An apparatus as claimed in claim 17, wherein the flag sheets are of different colour than the page sheets.

19. An apparatus as claimed in claim 17, wherein the flag sheets are of different texture than the page sheets.

20. An apparatus as claimed in claim 17, wherein the flag sheets are of different thickness than the page sheets.

21. An apparatus as claimed in claim 17, wherein the flag sheets are of different consistency than the page sheets.

22. A method for identifying pages corresponding to one or more documents from a stack of pages, comprising the steps of:

receiving printed sheet material;

separating the printed sheet material into groups of pages; and

introducing flag sheets having a different dimension than the corresponding dimension of the pages between consecutive groups of pages.

23. A method as claimed in claim 22, wherein the step of separating comprises the step of cutting the printed sheet material into pages having a first dimension and the step of introducing comprises the step of cutting the printed sheet material into flag sheets having a different dimension.

24. A method as claimed in claim 23, wherein the step of cutting the printed sheet material into flag sheets comprises cutting the printed sheet material in a direction transverse to the direction along which the dimension is measured.