Ricoh Company, Ltd.

John Barker Condon

Reinhard Heinrich Hohensee

Harry Lewis

Marquis G Waller

Kenneth Stuart Shouldice

Kelly Harr

Colin Reims

Systems and methods are provided for ink estimation. One embodiment is a system for dynamic ink use estimation. The system includes a cloud computing system. The cloud computing system includes a cloud event service able to receive a print job and potential configurations of a printer selected for printing the print job, and to initialize virtual printers for the printer that each correspond with one of the potential configurations. The cloud computing system also includes the virtual printers, which are able to operate in parallel to estimate amounts of ink used for each configuration during printing of the print job, and to store the estimated amounts of ink in a cloud storage.

Cloud-based parallel ink estimation for production printers

Systems and methods are provided for ink estimation. One embodiment is a system for dynamically revising ink estimation models. The system includes a memory storing a virtual machine for instantiating virtual printers that estimate amounts of ink used by a printer for print jobs, and a controller able, for each print job, to: identify estimated amounts of ink determined by the virtual printers according to each of multiple configurations for the printer, and identify a chosen configuration and a corresponding actual amount of ink used by the printer. The controller selects a configuration, determines that estimated amounts of ink for the selected configuration have less than a threshold difference from actual amounts of ink for each of multiple print jobs, and updates an ink estimation model at the virtual machine based on the estimated amounts of ink and corresponding print job data for the selected configuration.

Ink estimation model updates for production printers

A method is disclosed. The method includes detecting an object within Advanced Presentation Document (AFP) print data and inserting a Metadata Object Content Architecture 2.0 (MOCA-2) object into the AFP print data to associate contextual information with a component of data within the object.

Metadata tagging mechanism

Systems and methods are provided for piecewise encryption of Page Description Language (PDL) print jobs. One embodiment is a method that includes receiving a Page Description Language (PDL) print job at a printer, wherein the print job includes segments of PDL content, and includes unencrypted PDL content. For each of the segments within the print job, the method includes detecting an identifier (ID) for the segment, correlating the ID with an encryption key stored at the printer, and decrypting the segment at the printer via the encryption key. The method further includes printing the print job, including each segment that has been decrypted.

Piecewise encryption for content in print jobs

Systems and methods for preserving logical page order in a print job. One embodiment is a system that includes an interface that receives a print job having documents, and a controller that identifies different groups of logical pages belonging to different documents. The controller inserts an identifier into each logical page of the different groups that distinguishes logical pages of different documents, and directs the print job into a print workflow that comprises an ordered set of activities to perform upon the documents. The controller also obtains layout information that indicates a placement of one or more logical pages on a sheet, retrieves identifiers from each of the one or more logical pages of the sheet, and detects a print error based on a difference in the identifiers retrieved for the sheet.

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Corvallis, OR, United States of America

John Barker Condon