Customer schedulable machine quality adjust

#The invention relates to image quality adjustments and more particularly, to customer schedulable machine quality adjustment in an image reproduction machine.

#It is important in the operation of complex electronic equipment such as reproduction machines to maintain the quality of the finished copy sheets. Today's copiers must routinely perform a copy quality (CQ) check to insure that copies will be of the highest quality for the customer. Due to process control requirements, these copy quality checks may occur several times a day. The time when these CQ checks are performed may interrupt the customer's use of the copier for several minutes. This can not only be annoying and inconvenient for the operator, but may impede machine productivity as well. It is important for machine efficiency to minimize the time spent in these CQ checks and adjustments, especially during peak productivity periods. The need for quality adjustments becomes even more crucial in machines adapted for highlight color or full color reproductions since these machines often require more extensive or more frequent analysis and correction to produce a quality color product.

#It is known in prior art machines for the machine to cycle down in the middle of a reproduction job to initiate a needed copy quality adjustment. Sometimes manual operator intervention is needed to initiate the quality adjustment or to cycle up and return the machine from the adjustment phase to resume completing the reproduction job. This type of required operator attention is particularly inefficient. In addition, it is known in the prior art for example in D/92323, U.S. Ser. No. 07/940,257 to provide a plurality of time delays for adjusting the quality of the image processing apparatus. The time delays include immediately adjusting the quality of the image processing during a current job run, automatically adjusting the quality of the image processing apparatus upon completion of a current job run, and automatically adjusting the quality of the image processing apparatus upon a predetermined time delay depending upon job requirements after completion of a current job. Also, in prior art machines, the machine may simply cycle down after completion of a job when a quality adjustment is needed and require operator initiation of the quality adjustment.

#FIG. 1 is a schematic elevational view depicting various operating components and subsystems of a typical machine incorporating the present invention;

#FIG. 2 is a schematic illustrating the control boards for control of the machine shown in FIG. 1;

#FIG. 3 is an exploded view of the touch monitor screen depicted in FIG. 2; and

#For a general understanding of the features of the present invention, reference is made to the drawings. In the drawings, like reference numerals have been used throughout to identify identical elements.

#FIG. 1 shows one example of the overall construction of a color copying machine to which this Invention is applied. A typical color copying machine to which this Invention is applied is formed with the base machine 30, composed of a platen glass plate 31, which carries the original sheet thereon, an image input terminal (IIT) 32, an electrical control system container 33, the image output terminal (IOT) 34, and a paper tray 35, and a user interface (U/I) 36 and also, as optional items, of an editing pad 61, an automatic document feeder (ADF) 62, a sorter 63, and a film projector (F/P) 64.

#Electrical hardware is necessary for performing the control of the IIT, IOT, U/I, etc. mentioned above, and a plural number of boards for control of each of the processing units, such as the IIT, IPS, U/I, F/P, and so forth, which perform the image-forming process for the output signals from the IIT, and these are accommodated further in the electrical control system container 33.