Patent ID: 6915184

Claim:
A document collator comprising a conveyor system, a prime document feeder station and a plurality of enclosure document feeder stations arranged at spaced locations along the conveyor system, a collation station located downstream of the feeder stations at one end of the conveyor system, and control means, including means for determining which one of the plurality of feeder stations is the prime feeder station, the control means being operable to control each feeder station independently in such a way as to ensure that the documents from each of the enclosure document feeder stations which are located upstream of and including the prime feeder station are stacked one on top of each other with the prime document on top to form a prime document package and the documents from each of the feeder stations downstream of the prime feeder station are stacked one on top of each other to form an enclosure document package, and the prime document package is transported along the conveyor system at a predetermined distance from and upstream of the enclosure document package, the collator further comprising means for holding the enclosure package in the collation station and feeding the upstream prime document package onto the top of the downstream enclosure package with the prime document on top.