Kyocera Document Solutions Inc.

Xerox Corporation

Kyocera Document Solutions Development America, Inc.

Javier A Morales

Michael E Farrell

Michael M Chang

Jayant Bhatt

Edwin Philip Lockwood

Arturo Becerra

Nicholas Paul Osadciw

Robert T Cunningham

David C Robinson

Yoshihiro Osada

William Samuel Jacobs

Arlene J Buck

Jonathan David Levine

David E Rumph

Roger Lee Triplett

Michael J Evan

Katherine Bayquen Lao

Nishan Hossepian

Steve A Doria

Patrick Harrington

Jonathan A Goldstein

Paul Michael Ong Siy

Matthew Yoshio Morikawa

Roman D Liccini

Chris Mazur

Heidi O Thatcher

Atsushi Yamada

Michael E Parrell

Mohamed Mostafa

Michael A Farrell

Timothy Sterling Geesman

Michelle De Beus

Daniel Bell

Jobert Lim

A printing system includes an estimation system that provides estimates for ink or toner use for a print job at a target printing device. The estimation system retrieves digital job settings, digital front end (DFE) configuration settings, and printing device configuration settings from the target printing device. The estimate for recurring printing operations is stored at the estimation system. As printing instances occur, the estimation system retrieves the estimate along with its associated settings and compares them to current settings applicable at the printing device. Any difference between defined settings and current settings is resolved prior to printing the document. Job costing information also is generated for this instance of printing and provided to the estimation system.

Methods and printing system for verified production in printing operations

A printing system receives a print job. The print job includes parameters such as dimensions and print attributes. A plurality of papers is accessed in a paper catalog available for a printing device within the printing system. A group of papers is formed based on the dimensions. If the dimensions are for a non-standard size paper, then a standard size of available paper is determined. The smallest standard size paper that fits the dimensions of the print job may be a determined size. The group of papers includes paper entries from the paper catalog having the standard size. Subsets of the group of papers is defined using the attributes. The groups and subsets are presented in a recommended list of paper entries from the paper catalog.

Printing system and methods for enhanced paper selection

A printing system includes a printing device having paper trays. Each paper tray includes loaded paper and has one or more paper tray settings. The paper trays may be divided into paper tray groups. A number of job sheets needed to complete a current or subsequent print job is compared to the number of loaded sheets of paper in a paper tray group. If not enough loaded sheets are available, then the operator is prompted to load additional sheets. Further, another paper tray can be added to the paper tray group. A paper queue also may specify a quantity of paper to be loaded onto the printing device.

Preemptive paper tray management for printing operations

A raster image processor (RIP) system is used in a printing system to process a variety of different jobs. A front end receives the jobs and determines the job type. The job types include a print job, a preview job, and an estimation job. Depending on the type of job, the front end configures the RIPs within RIP system accordingly to process the job. The RIPs may process the job in parallel, with a high performance RIP processing the first page of the job. If the job is not processed in parallel, then the front end assigns the job to a very high performance RIP. The front end also assigns the preview job to a preview RIP and the estimation job to an estimation RIP. The front end configures RIPs as needed.

Methods and printing system using raster image processors (RIPs) configured for processing a preview job

Methods and printing system using raster image processors configured for processing a job

A printing device includes an inspection system that uses variable intervals to inspect printed sheets for a print job. The variable interval sets the inspection points for the inspection process. Once a defect is detected on a printed sheet, the sheets in the paper path are cleared and separated into good and defective sets of sheets. The cleared sheets are sent to an output bin for further review. After addressing the defect, the last good sheet printed is determined and adjusted to resume printing operations.

Methods for print inspection recovery operations at a printing device

A front end of a raster image processing (RIP) system decides a starting storage location and a storage hierarchy. The hierarchy dictates where the rendered pages of a job will be stored. At least one page of a first set of pages of a job are stored at a memory for the RIP system. At least one page of a second set of pages of the job are stored in a storage drive when the memory is not available. The type of job also dictates that the rendered pages of the job are stored in the storage drive. Complex pages also are stored in the storage drive while simple pages are discarded. The processing operations are managed so that the print engine is running efficiently.

Methods and printing system using intelligent RIP I/O for printing operations

Printing operations may use a hot folder. The hot folder includes printing instructions that are applied to print jobs within the hot folder. A file for the print job is stored in the hot folder. More than one file can be retained. Modifications to the file are made while it is within the hot folder, if allowed. Once processing of the file for printing operations is complete, the file is removed from the hot folder.

Management of hot folders during printing operations

An estimation system provides consumable use estimations, such as for ink or toner, in printing operations. The estimation system uses a classification-based consumable use process to estimate the consumable use. A print job is assigned a classification category according to an arbitrary job category selected for the print job and a job property defined for the print job using job settings. An estimate is provided using the classification category and the distribution of the consumable use for print jobs in the category. The estimate is adjusted by a consumable use adjustment factor that reflects the amount of ink or toner disposed of during container replacement or wasted during printing operations.

Methods and printing system using consumable use tracking to adjust consumable use estimation

Management of spot colors and spot color adjustments includes associating these color printing resources with print conditions, customer accounts, or projects for a printing device. A spot color adjustment is associated with a print condition, a customer account, or a project used for printing operations. A print job is received that specified a selected print condition, a selected customer account, or a selected project. The associated spot color adjustment is determined using these attributes. The spot color adjustment is applied during color printing operations for a document using the spot color. The spot color is printed within the document according to the specified spot color adjustment.

Methods for smart spot color management in printing operations

A color printing system manages ICC profiles by controlling ink use without performing the ICC profile creation operations. To obtain an ink limit for an ICC profile, a table associated with the ICC profile is parsed to determine the ink limit. The ink limit is decreased or increased. For an ink limit decrease, a color over the decreased ink limit is adjusted to meet the new ink limit. The ICC profile is updated accordingly. For an ink limit increase, the combination of primary colors are boosted by a percentage amount. Checks are made with regard to the volume-based ink limit and an quality check operation to accepted the boosted amount. The ICC profile is updated accordingly.

Methods and system for ink limit adjustments to ICC profiles for color printing

A printing system implements a peer to peer network to manage resources between printing devices, such as configuration settings, software programs, or multifunctional printer (MFP) applications. When a printing device is added to the peer to peer network, it queries an existing printing device for information about its resources. Such information includes versions of the software programs. The information is used to compare the resources at the added printing device to those within the peer to peer network, using the existing printing device. Any differences are resolved by upgrading the resources at the added printing device by retrieving them within the peer to peer network.

Methods and printing system for peer-to-peer printing device management

A printing system includes a printing device. The printing system also includes a preflight system that checks incoming print jobs for possible errors or issues before commencing printing operations. The preflight system implements a generative adversarial network to facilitate the identification of possible problems with printing. The generative adversarial network includes a generative neural network and a discriminatory neural network. The generative neural network introduces errors into input data to train the discriminatory neural network in identifying problems with print jobs. The discriminatory neural network backpropagates its output to train the generative neural network.

Machine learning preflight printing system and methods

A peer-to-peer network of printing devices is configured to share information and color printing resources, such as TRCs, spot colors, and ICC profiles, as well as paper catalogs within the network without the need for a centralized server or cloud service. The digital front ends (DFEs) of the printing devices manage printing device information which is made available to all printing devices. When an update occurs at a printing device within the peer-to-peer network, its DFE sends a signal to the other printing devices to synchronize their information with the updated information. When a new printing device is added to the peer-to-peer network, its information and color printing resources are merged or replaced with the information within the network.

Methods and printing system for peer-to-peer resource management

A printing system includes a printing device having paper trays. Each paper tray includes loaded paper and has one or more paper tray settings. The paper tray settings are defined for each paper tray. A paper tray setting is defined to reconfigure an installed paper tray to apply the setting. The reconfiguration of the paper tray is delayed until an action is completed, such as opening the paper tray to load the paper corresponding to the paper tray setting or the current print job is complete. After the action, the paper tray setting is applied to reconfigure the paper tray. Printing operations are enabled using the reconfigured paper tray.

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Rochester, NY, United States of America

Javier A Morales