Xerox Corporation

Susan W Baxter

Charles E Conrad

Robert A Coons, Jr

James B Myers

A system and method of printing a document and encoding information in a magnetic strip on the document wherein all the information to be printed and encoded is received from a single information source by the printer of the system. The document is printed with machine readable codes on a form having a magnetic strip. The printed codes are read by the system and used to magnetically encode information in the magnetic strip on the document. A system embodying the invention may also include a slitter for separating a printed and magnetically encoded document into sections, and a binder to bind plural documents or sections.

Printing and encoding of documents having a magnetic strip

Embedded intelligence in the form of machine readable indicia printed on at least some of the sheets of a document is used by a document integrating device to control a feeding operation performed by the document integrating device. Regular sheets located in the document immediately preceding the location of an insert sheet are output with machine readable information indicative of the subsequent location in the document of an insert sheet. These regular sheets are then supplied to a document integrater (either in a stack or as they are output from an imaging device). A first scanner in the document integrater scans the regular sheets as they are fed from an inlet (having, for example, a regular sheet feeder unit). When a regular sheet located in the document immediately prior to an insert sheet is fed from the inlet, the machine readable information indicative of the subsequent insert sheet is read by the first scanner. A controller of the document integrater then switches from feeding sheets from the regular sheet inlet to an insert sheet feeder unit containing insert sheets. The last insert sheet for each insert location in the document includes machine readable information thereon which causes the controller to switch back to feeding the regular sheets from the regular sheet inlet (or from some other insert sheet feeder unit).

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Rochester, NY, United States of America

Susan W Baxter