Patent Application
20060104687
The present disclosure relates to office equipment such as copiers, and in particular relates to copying images onto tab stock.
“Tab stock” is familiarly used to separate sections of multipage documents, as would be bound, for example, in ring binders or comb binders. An individual page of tab stock includes a tab extending from one edge of the sheet, and text can be printed on the tab. A page of tab stock typically has a total width greater than that of the paper with which it is used; for instance, for use in a book made from 8½×11 inch (letter-size) sheets, a suitable piece of tab stock will have a width of about nine inches, of which 8½ inches corresponds to the regular width of the sheets, plus an extra half inch associated with the tab.
In printing or copying multipage documents with tab stock (copying for present purposes being a type of printing), a printer must take into account the different widths of the tab stock and accompanying “regular” sheets so that the desired text is correctly placed on each tab. Because the tab is located in effect outside the image area for a regular sheet, a system must be devised so that the text is reliably placed on the tab; such a system should also smoothly integrate the printing of tab stock with the printing of regular sheets.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,210,622 discloses a printer/copier system in which tab stock is printed on by means of a “variable image shift.” However, the amount of image shift required to place selected text on a tab must be entered, or at least selected as default, by the human user.
According to one aspect, there is provided a method of operating a copier including an input scanner for recording images from an input sheet moving in an input process direction, yielding image data, and a print engine for printing an image based on the image data on an output sheet moving in an output process direction. The input sheet is fed through the input scanner with an image for a tab near a lead edge thereof. An output sheet having a tab relative to the print engine is fed so a tab on the output sheet is on a trail edge thereof. An image formed by the output sheet is displaced toward the trail edge of the output sheet by a predetermined length.
According to another aspect, there is provided a method of operating a print engine, comprising feeding a sheet of tab stock in a process direction relative to the print engine, so that a tab of the tab stock is disposed at a trail edge of the tab stock. The print engine places a standard-size image on the tab stock. Extra image data is added to the standard-size image, at a location of the standard-size image corresponding to a lead edge of the tab stock along the process direction, thereby displacing the standard-size image so that at least a portion of the standard-size image is placed on the tab of the tab stock.
In a digital copier, there is also a print engine, here generally indicated as 20. In this embodiment, which is a xerographic printer, the print engine 20 includes a rotatable image receptor, such as electrostatographic photoreceptor 22, on which images are created and subsequently transferred, in a manner generally familiar in the art (typical elements associated with xerography, such as development, exposure, transfer and cleaning stations, are not shown).
Output sheets, on which images are placed by the print engine 20, are initially placed in one of a set of paper supply stacks, from which they are drawn one at a time. One such paper supply stack is indicated as 30, although there are typically other stacks available for feeding into the print engine 20, each with a paper supply of a predetermined type. Paper supply stack 30 here includes “tab stock,” meaning, in this embodiment, sheets which have general dimensions similar to regular stock (such as letter, tabloid, A3, A4, etc.) but in addition have a tab T defined along one edge thereof. The tab T effectively increases the dimension of the tab stock, relative to a corresponding dimension in the regular stock: to take one example, for use in a book made from 8½×11 inch sheets, a suitable piece of tab stock will have a width of about nine inches, of which 8½ inches corresponds to the regular width of the sheets, plus an extra half inch associated with the tab.
As shown in
To reproduce the image derived from the non-tab-stock input sheet onto a tab-stock output sheet so that the image is placed on the tab of the output sheet, in the architecture of
To perform this displacement, according to one embodiment, the image from input scanner 12 is buffered or “padded” by the addition of image data, such as in the form of scanlines of white or blank pixels, that extends the length of the image along output process direction OP by a fixed amount. This fixed amount corresponds approximately to the additional length along OP provided to tab stock by the tab T. However, the image data is added to the side of the printed image which is opposite that of the lead edge of the data, where the image to be placed on the tab (the image TAB in this example) is located. As can be seen in
In one embodiment, the extra data corresponding to the buffer is added to a page image whenever tab stock is detected as being drawn from a drawer or stack in the copier. This cause and effect can be set up when only tab stock is being printed on in a job, or when tab stock is intermixed with regular-sized stock within a job. In one possible embodiment, if it is known in advance that a certain paper tray or drawer such as 32 contains tab stock, the extra image data will be added to the output image as a result of a sheet of tab stock being drawn from that drawer. All of the displacement and ancillary functions can be carried out through a control system 50 associated with the digital copier, which is shown generally in
The claims, as originally presented and as they may be amended, encompass variations, alternatives, modifications, improvements, equivalents, and substantial equivalents of the embodiments and teachings disclosed herein, including those that are presently unforeseen or unappreciated, and that, for example, may arise from applicants/patentees and others.
