Printing system with balanced consumable usage
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorsCharles Anthony Radulski, David G. Anderson
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A printing system includes a plurality of marking engines. The marking engines selectively receive at least one replacement module, such as a toner or ink cartridge. The replacement module includes a consumable such as toner or ink, which is consumed during rendering of images by the respective marking engine. A scheduling system assigns images to the marking engines for rendering on a print medium, such as paper. The scheduling system has a mode of operation in which images are selectively assigned to the marking engines to balance usage of the consumable by the marking engines.
Claims18
A printing system comprising:
- a plurality of marking engines, each of the marking engines selectively receiving at least one replacement module comprising a consumable which is consumed during rendering of images by the marking engine, the consumable comprising a marking material;
- and
- a scheduling system which assigns images to the marking engines for rendering on a print medium, the scheduling system having a mode of operation in which images are selectively assigned to the marking engines to balance usage of the consumable by the marking engines, the scheduling system taking into account a level of the consumable for each of the plurality of marking engines, the level diminishing as the consumable is consumed, and assigning images to reduce a variation between the levels of the consumable.
A printing system comprising:
- a plurality of marking engines, each of the marking engines selectively receiving at least one replacement module comprising a consumable which is consumed during rendering of images by the marking engine;
- a scheduling system which assigns images to the marking engines for rendering on a print medium, the scheduling system having a mode of operation in which images are selectively assigned to the marking engines to balance usage of the consumable by the marking engines;
- and
- a processing component which determines the consumable level for the consumable for each of the plurality of marking engines from bitmaps of the images assigned to each of the marking engines.
A printing system comprising:
- a plurality of marking engines, each of the marking engines selectively receiving at least one replacement module comprising a consumable which is consumed during rendering of images by the marking engine;
- a scheduling system which assigns images to the marking engines for rendering on a print medium, the scheduling system having a mode of operation in which images are selectively assigned to the marking engines to balance usage of the consumable by the marking engines;
- and
- the consumable comprises a plurality of different colored marking materials and the scheduling system selectively assigns images to balance usage of the marking material color which is closest to depletion.
A storage medium comprising information for scheduling print jobs for printing by a plurality of associated marking engines, comprising:
- information that for each of a plurality of images to be rendered:
- stores a toner level for each of the associated marking engines;
- and
- assigns images to a selected one of the plurality of marking engines based on the toner levels, to balance usage of the consumable.
A method comprising:
- for each of a plurality of marking engines, installing a replaceable module in the marking engine, the replaceable module comprising a consumable which is consumed during rendering of images by the marking engine;
- selectively assigning images to the marking engines for rendering the images on print media, whereby consumption of the consumable is balanced among the marking engines;
- and
- alerting an operator to replace a plurality of the replacement modules when the consumable of one of the replacement modules is consumed.
A printing system comprising:
- a plurality of marking engines, each of the marking engines configured for rendering images by applying a marking material to a print medium;
- a replaceable marking material cartridge associated with each of the marking engines which supplies the marking material to the marking engine, a level of the marking material diminishing as the marking material is applied to the print medium;
- a processing component which tracks the levels of the marking materials for each of the marking engines;
- and
- a scheduling system in communication with the processing component which identifies marking engines which are available for rendering images and assigns the images to be rendered among the marking engines so as to reduce a variation between the levels of the marking material.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.