Image forming apparatus having book reading and page turning capabilities

An image forming apparatus having a book reading function and a page turning function, comprising:

• a document table for setting a book document in a spread position face up;
• image reading means for reading a surface of the book document including two spread pages by optically scanning said surface;
• data storing means for storing image data representative of said two spread pages of the book document scanned by said image reading means;
• image forming means for forming, based on said image data, an image on a first sheet fed by sheet feeding means;
• refeeding means for turning over the first sheet carrying the image formed by said image forming means on a front thereof, and again feeding said first sheet toward said image forming means;
• and
• page turning means for turning over a page of the book document by moving over the surface of said book document in a direction opposite to an image reading direction;
• wherein among said image data representative of said two spread pages, image data read last are read out of said data storing means first and then output to form a corresponding front image on a front of a second sheet fed by said sheet feeding means, and then image data read first are read out of said data storing means and output to form a corresponding rear image on a rear of first sheet fed from said refeeding means.

An image forming apparatus having a book reading function and a page turning function, comprising:

• a document table for setting a book document in a spread position face up;
• image reading means for reading a surface of the book document including two spread pages by optically scanning said surface;
• data storing means for storing image data representative of two spread pages of the book document scanned by said image reading means;
• image forming means for forming, based on said image data, an image on a first sheet fed by sheet feeding means;
• refeeding means for turning over the first sheet carrying the image formed by said image forming means on a front thereof, and again feeding said first sheet toward said image forming means;
• and
• page turning means for turning over a page of the book document by moving over the surface of said book document in a direction opposite to an image reading direction;
• wherein while said page turning means turns over a page of the book document, said image data read by said image reading means prior to turning of the page by the page turning means are read out of said data storing means and then output by said image forming means on the first sheet refed by said refeeding means.

An image forming method comprising the steps of:

• reading a first two spread pages of a book document by image reading means;
• storing, among image data representing the first two spread pages and generated by said image reading means, at least the image data assigned to a rear of a sheet in data storing means;
• forming, based on the image data representing the first two spread pages and assigned to a front side of a sheet, an image on a front of a first sheet fed by sheet feeding means;
• reading a second two spread pages of the book document by said image reading means after said storing step;
• feeding said first sheet with said front image formed thereon to a duplex copy unit;
• forming, based on the image data representing the second two spread pages and generated by said image reading means and assigned to a front of a sheet, a front image on a front side of a second sheet fed by the sheet feeding means;
• refeeding the first sheet from the duplex copy unit;
• outputting, after forming said front image on said front side of said second sheet and after refeeding of the first sheet, the image data stored in the data storing means;
• and
• forming a corresponding rear image corresponding to the outputted image data on a rear side of the first sheet which was previously conveyed to the duplex copy unit and which has the respective front image formed on the front side of said first sheet.

An image forming method comprising the steps of:

• (a) reading first two spread pages of a book document by image reading means;
• (b) reproducing an image of one of the first spread pages and represented by first image data on a front of a first sheet fed from sheet feeding means by image forming means;
• (c) conveying the first sheet carrying the image to refeeding means;
• (d) turning over a page of the book document by page turning means to cause second two spread pages to appear;
• (e) reading the second spread pages by said image reading means;
• (f) storing image data representative of the second spread pages in data storing means;
• (g) reading third image data representative of one of the second spread pages read last out of said data storing means, and forming an image represented by said third image data on a front of a second sheet fed from said sheet feeding means by said image forming means;
• and
• (h) reading second image data representative of the other of the second spread pages read first out of said data storing means, and forming an image represented by said second image data on a rear of the first sheet.