Electronic alignment for a paper processing machine

An electrophotographic machine comprising:

• a photoreceptive surface;
• mounting means for said photoreceptive surface;
• an exposure station;
• drive means for moving said photoreceptive surface through said exposure station;
• means for producing an image on said photoreceptive surface at said exposure station;
• means for developing said image;
• and
• aligning means for electronically aligning a copy sheet to receive said image, said aligning means including programmable logic means, and further including sensor means for sensing the position of all copy sheets after alignment to sense for the continued presence of errors in alignment to produce correction factors for further altering the output of said programmable logic means in accordance with an average of said continued errors over a predetermined sample number of copy sheets.

An electrophotographic copier machine comprising:

• a photoreceptive surface;
• mounting means for said photoreceptive surface;
• an exposure station;
• drive means for moving said photoreceptive surface through said exposure station;
• means for producing an image on said photoreceptive surface at said exposure station;
• means for developing said image;
• aligning means for electronically aligning a copy sheet to receive said image, said aligning means including programmable logic means and drive rolls under the control of said logic means;
• a document glass;
• a document feeding mechanism for feeding an original document to be copied to a nominal desired position on said document glass;
• and
• sensor means for sensing the position of the document side edge for producing a measure of document side edge position, said sensor connected to said programmable logic means for automatically entering said measure into said programmable logic means for altering the output of said programmable logic means to change the position of a copy sheet destined to receive an image of said original document to dynamically and electronically compensate for the mispositioning of said document on said document glass from said nominal desired position.

A method for electronically aligning components of the copy paper path of an electrophotographic machine to cause image receiving sheets to properly align with an image comprising the steps of:

• producing an image of a master pattern on photoreceptive material for juxtaposition with a preprinted pattern on a master image receiving sheet;
• comparing said master pattern to said preprinted pattern to ascertain a measure of errors in the alignment of said image and said receiving sheet;
• inserting said measure into programmable logic means to produce an output altered in accordamce with said measure of errrors;
• and
• thereafter controlling receiving sheet positioning means by the output of said programmable logic means to Position receiving sheets in a manner which eliminates said errors in alignment.

A method for electronically aligning the components of an image producing machine so that image receiving sheets are properly aligned with an image comprising the steps of:

• producing an image on an image receiving sheet;
• ascertaining the position of said image on said sheet to produce a measure of error in the alignment of said image and said receiving sheet;
• inserting said measure of alignment into programmable logic means to produce an output altered in accordance with said measure;
• and
• utilizing the output of said programmable logic means to control means for electronically adjusting the components of said machine to a nominally correct position at which the relative position of said image and image receiving sheet are in correct alignment for subsequent machine operation.