Xerox Corporation

Donald L Miller

Gary William Roscoe

William M OuYang

Kenneth Paul Moore

Richard E Eisemann

Jose J Soler

Ronald P Booth, Sr

Eugene L Smith

Prashant K Phadnis

Phillip E Chapman

Julie A Lapp

Stephanie P Burton

David P Cropek

An apparatus for mechanically assisting the transfer of an image from an image bearing member onto a substrate. The apparatus includes a transfer assist blade that forces a substrate toward an image bearing member, a motor, a mechanical assembly for coupling the motor to the transfer assist blade such that motor operation changes the transfer assist blade force, and a controller that controls the motor operation. The controller might receive inputs from a substrate sensor, an operator control panel, and/or a service adjustment. The controller might use those inputs to control the motor operation, and thus the transfer force. Alternatively, the controller might control the transfer force as a result of the operation of the overall machine, such as by changing the transfer force during duplex printing or during the transfer of various color images.

Variable transfer assist blade force

A technique is provided for controlling the interposition of one or more special sheets into a stream of regular imaged substrates. In one example, a point in time at which a special insert sheet should be fed from a special insertion sheet subsystem to the stream is determined by reference to plural sets of preset time periods. In this example, the preset time periods can be adjusted to accommodate print engine/interposing module machine clock fluctuations. In another example, interposition of a special insert sheet with the stream of regular imaged substrates is maintained at an acceptable level by comparing a distance between a special insert sheet fed to the stream and an adjacent regular imaged substrate with a predefined tolerance. The comparison can then be used to adjust feed times of special insert sheets subsequently fed to the stream.

Apparatus and method of controlling interposition of sheet in a stream

A method of normalizing the count in a counter depending upon the type or size of the copy sheets processed in an electronic image processing machine including the steps of determining the size or type of copy sheets in process in the machine, recording a count in the counter in response to the size or type of copy sheets in process, normalizing the count in the counter as a function of the change in size or type of the copy sheets in process, and relating the normalized counts to the need to replace selected components of the image processing machine.

Normalizing sheet count to predict hardware replacement intervals

A method of purging copy sheets after a machine malfunction from a copy sheet path having a plurality of zones including the steps of determining the existence of copy sheets in process in any of the copy sheet path zones, selectively activating a plurality of independent copy sheet drives to maintain a predetermined interdocument space between any copy sheets in process and systematically purging the copy sheets from the zones of the paper path in a predetermined order based upon the particular disposition of the copy sheets in the sheet path zones.

Selective control of distributed drives to maintain interdocument gap

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Penfield, NY, United States of America

Donald L Miller