International Business Machines Corporation

Frederick W Johnson

Carl A Queener

Gary A Clark

Ronald V Davidge

James Charles Rogers

George G Promis, Jr

Dorris D James

The invention concerns a method and apparatus for operating a multibin sheet collator, particularly a copier/collator installation. Additional to the number of sets to be collated, the number of sheets contained in each set is entered into the collator logic. If this number of sheets in a set exceeds the capacity of a single collator bin, adjacent bins are grouped together and treated as one virtual bin with increased capacity, thus extending the collator usage. Sheets exceeding the total capacity of the collator can be fed into additional receptacles.

Method and apparatus for adaptive collation

Method and apparatus are described for job recovery when jamming of copies occurs in copying devices generating duplex copies electrophotographically from either simplex or duplex originals. Recovery from jams while copying the first side of simplex or duplex originals can normally be immediately effected during the initial, or normal, run, after clearing the jam. Recovery from jams during copying of the second side is effected by clearing the jammed copies from the copying device, optionally inserting blank sheets as the initial copying run is continued to flag the position of each of the removed jammed copies in the generated stack of copies, rerunning the originals through the copying device after completion of the initial copying run with duplex copies being generated only as necessary to replace jammed copies occurring during the initial run, and then inserting the duplex copies last made in the proper positions in the stack of copies made during the initial run, which copies replace the blank flagging sheets, if utilized. The apparatus includes a plurality of counters, memory registers and comparators interconnected by logic circuitry to semi-automatically effect job recovery due to jammed copies occurring during duplex copying from either simplex or duplex originals.

Job recovery method and apparatus

The invention concerns a method of controlling a multi-bin sheet collator. Adjacent collator bins are treated as one virtual bin and sheet feeding is controlled appropriately by skipping bins if the number of sets to be collated equals or is smaller than half the number of bins. Thus, multi-page documents having a number of pages exceeding the capacity of a single bin can be collated. In a combined copier/collator the number of copies selected by the operator determines the number of sets, and thus the size and grouping of the virtual bins.

Virtual bin collator control

A photoconductor member is cleaned by a rotating fiber brush. The cleaned particles are knocked from the brush by a knock-off bar causing substantial wear on the brush. To compensate for the wear, both the knock-off bar and the fiber brush are adjusted for maintaining cleansing contact between the photoconductor member and the brush, plus the brush with the knock-off bar. In a preferred form of the invention, the fiber brush also is an air impeller for entraining cleaned particles from the photoconductor drum into a disposal station which, by way of example, may contain a scavanging roll and an air filter. The adjustments are such that the air impeller properties of the rotating brush are maintained throughout the life of the brush.

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Boulder, CO, United States of America

Frederick W Johnson