Patent ID: 8172216

Claim:
An apparatus for gathering documents comprising: a supply track; at least two feeding stations arranged for feeding documents to the supply track; at least one gathering station arranged for gathering documents arriving via the supply track into a stack; a sensor along the supply track, positioned downstream of at least one of the feeding stations and positioned upstream of the at least one gathering station, for scanning markings from documents in the supply track and generating signals in accordance with the scanned markings; a divert station arranged for diverting a document from the supply track downstream of the sensor and upstream of the at least one gathering station; and a drive structure arranged for driving displacement of documents from all the feeding stations along the supply track to the at least one gathering station, for driving displacement of documents from the supply track to the divert station, for driving displacement of documents stacked in the at least one gathering station, and for driving displacement of documents from the divert station along the supply track to the at least one gathering station; and a control system for controlling the drive structure; wherein the control system is arranged for controlling the drive structure for: driving, in response to a signal from the sensor representing a predetermined mark read from a document fed from one of the feeding stations, displacement of said document from the supply track into the divert station; subsequently driving displacement of at least one document from another one of the feeding stations to the at least one gathering station; subsequently driving displacement of the documents stacked in the at least one gathering station thereby clearing the at least one gathering station; and subsequently driving displacement of the document in the divert station to the at least one gathering station.