Hewlett-packard Company

Ivan F Crespo

Jeffrey T Hendricks

Thomas E McCue, Jr

Raymond C Sherman

John C Santon

William Watts

Gary Hays

A Z-fold print media handling system for printing banners and the like uses an inkjet printing mechanism without a tractor-feed. A series of stuttering stopping and starting steps generates varying static and dynamic frictional forces to separate the first sheet of a Z-fold stack from the remainder of the stack. Both conventional cut-sheet media and Z-fold media are fed using the same printing mechanism, which pulls the media toward a printzone through frictional engagement with a first surface of the media To prevent printhead crashes and smearing the image near the perforations joining the Z-fold sheets, the printhead to media spacing is increased for Z-fold media over the standard spacing used for cut-sheet media. A cam feature is incorporated into the media drive clutch disk to determine whether an operator has set a selector lever for cut-sheet or Z-fold printhead to media spacing.

Z-fold print media handling system

A Z-fold print media handling system for printing banners and the like uses an inkjet printing mechanism without a tractor-feed. A series of stuttering stopping and starting steps generates varying static and dynamic frictional forces to separate the first sheet of a Z-fold stack from the remainder of the stack. Both conventional cut-sheet media and Z-fold media are fed using the same printing mechanism, which pulls the media toward a printzone through frictional engagement with a first surface of the media. To prevent printhead crashes and smearing the image near the perforations joining the Z-fold sheets, the printhead to media spacing is increased for Z-fold media over the standard spacing used for cut-sheet media. A cam feature is incorporated into the media drive clutch disk to determine whether an operator has set a selector lever for cut-sheet or Z-fold printhead to media spacing.

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Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Ivan F Crespo