Patent ID: 6850731
Filing Date: 2005-02-01
Classification: G03G

Abstract:
1. A system for correctly collating successive pages of a document in a document imaging job where performance of that job has involved a divided, plural-stream, page-flow approach, with different pages in the job following two different paths through the job toward a collator which is to be fed successive job pages by the system, and each of such paths includes a pre-fuser portion and a post-fuser portion, said system comprising page-feed structure for each different path, disposed upstream from such a collator, and each positioned to receive pages that have followed its associated path, each page-feed structure being constructed to feed such received pages to the collator, with one of said page-feed structures being specifically associated with the pre-fuser portion of one of such paths, and the other page-feed structure being specifically associated with the post-fuser portion of the other path, and feed-control structure operatively connected to said page-feed structures, and cooperatively controlling the operations thereof whereby, collectively for said page-feed structures, plural operating modalities exist therefor, one modality involving feeding to the collator of the appropriate, next-successive job page relative to the last prior page received by the collator, with such feeding occurring from whichever one of said page-feed structures is responsible for such next-page feeding activity, and another modality involving the suspension of page feeding by the page-feed structure which is specifically associated with the pre-fuser portion of the mentioned one path, and where the next page associated with that feed structure is not the correct, next-successive page in the job document relative to the prior page received by the collator.