US 4,568,172 A · Small document set recirculative copying

Abstract

A method and apparatus of more efficiently copying sets of document sheets having a small number of document sheets per set on a copier with a recirculating document handler, onto plural collated copy sheet sets, with plural copying recirculations of all the document sheets in the recirculating document handler by automatically commonly recirculating for copying in the same recirculating document handler a plurality of different small document sets, and automatically separating the plural copy sheets made therefrom into separate collated sub-sets, each copy sub-set corresponding to one of the different small document sets, and wherein the number of the subsets is greater than the plural number of document copying recirculations, the separation being controlled automatically in response to the number of document sheets in the commonly recirculated small document sets. The recirculation of documents in the recirculating document handler may be automatically halted after the initial copying circulation of the original document set, for the loading of a copy set thereof, in response to the counting of a number of original sheets of less than a preset number providing efficient copying. The automatic separating may be provided by a compiler/finisher for the collated copy sheet sets, which normally operates only once per copying circulation of all the documents in the recirculating document handler, but which herein is automatically operated a greater number of times corresponding to the number of the plural small sets being commonly recirculated.

Claims27

Dependent claims

A method of more efficiently copying sets of document sheets having a small number of document sheets per set on a copier with a recirculating document handler, onto plural collated copy sheet sets, with plural copying recirculations of all the document sheets in said recirculating document handler, comprising the steps of:

automatically commonly recirculating for copying in said same recirculating document handle a plurality of different said small document sets, and
automatically separating and separately fastening together the plural copy sheets made therefrom into separate collated sub-sets, each said copy sub-set corresponding to one of said different small document sets, and wherein the number of said sub-sets is greater than said plural number of document copying recirculations,
said separation being controlled automatically in response to the respective number of document sheets in said commonly recirculated small document sets.

Copying means for more efficiently copying sets of document sheets having a small number of sheets per set on a copier with a recirculating document handler onto plural collated copy sheet sets normally corresponding in number to the number of copying recirculations of the document sheets by said recirculating document handler, which recirculating document handler and copying means normally copies only a single document set at a time, comprising:

means for commonly and automatically recirculating and plurally copying in said recirculating document handler a plurality of different said small document sets,
and means for automatically separating and separately fastening together said copy sheets made therefrom into separate collated sub-sets of a greater number than said number of copying recirculations, each said copy sheet sub-set corresponding in its number of copy sheets to one of said different small document sets,
said separation means being controlled automatically in response to means indicative of the number of document sheets in at least one of said commonly recirculated small document sets.

In a copier with a recirculating document handler for making plural precollated plural sheet copy sets from a single plural page set of plural document sheets plurally recirculated from the document handler to the imaging station of the copier and back, with control means for counting the number of document sheets being recirculated and normally controlling the output of said precollated copy sets in separated said sets each containing numbers of copy sheets corresponding to said number of document sheets in said one set, the improvement comprising:

selectable sub-set control means for selectably modifying said control means to separate said copy sheets into separate sub-sets having a selected number of sheets less than said number of document sheets, the number of said sub-sets corresponding to a plural number of sets of document sheets being commonly recirculated in said document handler,
means for separately binding said output copy sets into said separated collated sub-sets in response to said selection of said sub-set control means comprising automatic on-line binding means actuated to separately bind copy sub-sets corresponding to separate document sets commonly recirculated in said RDH.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Small document set recirculative copying

Life of this patent

Small document set recirculative copying

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims27