Office printing apparatus with shingling of sheets in a duplex loop

A printing apparatus, comprising:

• a marking device;
• a belt transport, defining a surface movable in a process direction;
• a first pair of rollers defining a dispense nip, disposed upstream of the belt transport in the process direction;
• an inverting mechanism for accepting sheets from the marking device and inverting sheets before the sheets are fed through the dispense nip;
• a second pair of rollers defining a feeder nip, disposed downstream of the belt transport in the process direction, the second pair of rollers being disposed to feed sheets to the marking device;
• and
• control means for causing feeding of a leading edge of a first sheet a predetermined short distance through the dispense nip, and then feeding leading edges of each of a plurality of subsequent sheets a predetermined short distance through the dispense nip, thereby causing respective leading edges of the first sheet and subsequent sheets to be spaced by the predetermined short distance as the plurality of sheets are fed through the dispense nip and placed on the belt transport;
• the control means further causing the rollers forming the feeder nip to draw a leading edge of a sheet when the leading edge of the sheet enters the feeder nip from the belt transport.