Printing and binding apparatus

A printing and binding method for making booklets by printing a plurality of image information items, on printing paper sheets and by using an electrophotographic recording apparatus, said printing and binding method comprising:

• a printing information and disposition determining step in which the size of the pages of each booklet, the number of said booklets to be printed and image information items of each page of said booklet are inputted so as to determine the size of each printing paper sheet to be loaded into the apparatus and the arrangement of said image information items to be printed;
• a cutting step in which said rolled paper is, in accordance with said determined arrangement, cut into printing paper sheets having the thus determined size;
• a printing step in which a first printed operation is conducted to print image information items of the number, which corresponds to the number of booklets which can be printed simultaneously, on predetermined areas of one printing paper sheet which are disposed in said determined arrangement, said printing operation is followed by succeeding printing operations on predetermined areas of other printing paper sheets for the rest of the total pages of said booklet so as to print the contents of the image information of said booklet so that booklets to be bound are printed, each of the predetermined areas of each printing paper sheet corresponding to one of the pages of each booklet;
• a separation step in which the areas of respective printing paper sheets printed in said printing step are simultaneously separated one from another at boundaries of pages of said booklets to form stacks of the thus separated areas of the printing paper sheets;
• and
• a binding step in which the separated areas of each stack are bound to form a booklet.

In a printing and binding apparatus comprising paper supply means for supplying printing paper sheets, means for inputting image information, and printing means which uses an electrophotographic recording apparatus for printing the thus input image information on the printing paper sheets, and means for cutting and binding printed recording paper sheets to form booklets, for the improvement comprising:

• printing information arrangement determining means including input means for inputting the number of booklets, the size of said printing paper sheet and the size of each page to be printed, and image information arrangement determining means for determining the arrangement of said image information to be printed in accordance with a variety of the information items;
• printing means including a photosensitive drum, a plurality of exposure units disposed in the lengthwise direction of said photosensitive drum, a plurality of development units for developing electrostatic latent images formed by said exposure units, a plurality of transfer units for transferring images developed by said development units onto said printing paper sheets, and a fixing unit for fixing said image transferred onto said printing paper sheets;
• separation means for simultaneously cutting, in accordance with the thus input size of the page, the printed printing paper sheets of the number corresponding to the number of page to be contained in each of said booklets to form a plurality of stacks of the thus separated printed recording sheets;
• and
• binding means for binding said stacks of separated printed recording sheets, respectively.