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US 4,860,060 AGranted
Microfiche printing system and method
AssigneeTameran, Inc.
InventorsDavid S. Wise, Walter E. Janik
Life of this patent
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AssigneeTameran, Inc.
InventorsDavid S. Wise, Walter E. Janik
Estimating the term…
A microfiche printing system and method includes an optical system operative to scan and temporarily record microfiche image edge data on a high speed row scanning stroke of a microfiche sheet and to print the row of microfiche images onto plain paper on a printing stroke of the microfiche sheet using the temporarily recorded data automatically to control microfiche image masking. The optics system includes a shutter/mirror assembly having a shutter movable between an open position for printing microfiche images aligned with the optics in the printing stroke and a closed position to block the light path of the optics system edge masking functions in the printing stroke and for diverting the image for edge sensing functions in the scanning stroke. The optics system further includes two edge masks synchronously driven toward and away from one another, the edge masks including guided leads of narrow film strips reciprocally oppositely driven by rotatable spaced spools powered by stepper motors to control the spacing between the guided leads during the printing stroke to mask the microfiche image optics in accordance with edge data temporarily recorded during the scanning stroke.
A microfiche printing system comprising
A method for printing microfiche images from a sheet containing rows and columns of microfiche images onto plain paper comprising the steps of scanning a row of microfiche images through an optics system in one direction temporarily to record edge location data for each microfiche image in that row, passing the microfiche images in that row through the optics system in the opposite direction for printing, effectively masking the respective microfiche images in that row during printing in accordance with the edge location data recorded during scanning, indexing the sheet to align the next row of microfiche images with the optics system to repeat the scanning, passing and masking sequence on that next row and repeating the scanning, passing, masking and indexing steps until all rows of microfiche images on the sheet have been printed.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.