High speed printing using an array of low speed printers
First Claim
1. A printing system, comprising:
- a first printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data;
a second printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; and
,an electronic image control device which can receive electronic image data that corresponds to a first printed page and a second printed page, and provide said electronic image data to said first and second printer engines such that said first printer engine produces the first printed page and said second printer engine produces the second printed page.
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Abstract
A printer system which allocates various pages of a job to a plurality of individual printers that each print a different page of the job. The system is therefore capable of increasing the speed of the job without requiring a faster engine speed. The printer system includes a plurality of print engines, a sequenced stacking device, imaging electronics to create raster image signals suitable for the video input of the print engines and control electronics to direct these electrical signals to each of the print engines on a page by page basis and to control the stacking device to direct printed sheets to the output stack in proper sequence. The stacking device loads the print images into a single properly sequenced output stack at a speed of n×i images per minute, wherein n is the number of print engines used and i is the speed of a single print engine in images per minute.
34 Citations
14 Claims
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1. A printing system, comprising:
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a first printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; a second printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; and
,an electronic image control device which can receive electronic image data that corresponds to a first printed page and a second printed page, and provide said electronic image data to said first and second printer engines such that said first printer engine produces the first printed page and said second printer engine produces the second printed page. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. A printing system, comprising:
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a first printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; a second printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; a third printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; a fourth printer engine that can produce printed pages from electronic image data; an electronic image control device which can receive electronic image data that corresponds to a first printed page, a second printed page, a third printed page and fourth printed page, and provide said electronic image data to said first, second, third and fourth printer engines such that said first printer engine produces the first printed page, said second printer engine produces the second printed page, said third printer engine produces the third printed page and said fourth printer engine produces the fourth printed page; and
,a stacker mechanism that stacks the printed pages produced by said first, second, third and fourth printers. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A method for generating a plurality of printed pages printed, comprising the steps of:
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a) generating electronic image data that correspond to a first printed page and a second printed page; b) sending said electronic image data that corresponds to the first printed page to a first printer engine; c) sending said electronic image data that corresponds to the second printed page to a second printer engine; and
,d) generating first and second printed pages from said electronic image data. - View Dependent Claims (14)
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Specification