AUTOMATIC LOAD BALANCER FOR PRESSES
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A press load balancer automatically balances the printing load over a number of presses by taking into account the load on each press and the substrates (i.e., paper types) and inks installed on the presses to improve throughput while minimizing load on the press operators.
-
Citations
36 Claims
-
1-16. -16. (canceled)
-
17. A method for load balancing presses, comprising:
-
identifying a highest priority print job in a post-raster image processor (RIP) queue; determining a required option for the identified highest priority print job; determining whether there is a set of available presses that has the required option for the highest priority print job installed; in response to determining that there is a set of available presses that has the required option for the highest priority print job installed, determining a least loaded press from the set of available presses; and allocating the highest priority print job to the least loaded press from the set of available presses, wherein the highest print job is moved from the post-RIP queue to a press loader queue for the least loaded press from the set of preferred presses. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23)
-
-
24. A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with executable instructions for execution by a processor to load balance presses, wherein the instructions are to cause the processor to:
-
identify a highest priority print job in a post-raster image processor (RIP) queue; determine a required option for the identified highest priority print job; determine whether there is a set of available presses that has the required option for the highest priority print job installed; in response to a determination that there is a set of available presses that has the required option for the highest priority print job installed, determine a least loaded press from the set of available presses; and allocate the highest priority print job to the least loaded press from the set of available presses, wherein the highest print job is moved from the post-RIP queue to a press loader queue for the least loaded press from the set of preferred presses. - View Dependent Claims (25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
-
-
31. An apparatus to load balance presses, said apparatus comprising:
-
a processor; and a memory on which is stored machine readable instructions that are to cause the processor to; identify a highest priority print job in a post-raster image processor (RIP) queue; determine a required option for the identified highest priority print job; determine whether there is a set of available presses that has the required option for the highest priority print job installed; in response to a determination that there is a set of available presses that has the required option for the highest priority print job installed, determine a least loaded press from the set of available presses; and allocate the highest priority print job to the least loaded press from the set of available presses, wherein the highest print job is moved from the post-RIP queue to a press loader queue for the least loaded press from the set of preferred presses. - View Dependent Claims (32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
-
Specification