Patent ID: 7021184

Claim:
An inserter input system comprising: a web feeder providing a web of printed material, the web feeder feeding the web at a first velocity in a first direction; a web slitting knife splitting the web along the first direction into at least two portions; a web cutter cutting the portions of slit web transverse to the first direction while the web is transported through the web cutter at the first velocity to form side-by-side individual sheets; a right angle turn mechanism downstream of the web cutter whereby the individual sheets are rearranged to be one on top of the other in a shingled arrangement; a high speed separation transport downstream of the right angle turn and pulling individual shingled sheets out from the shingled arrangement and whereby sheets are thereafter transported serially and separated by predetermined gaps; and one or more sensors for scanning a code on a document processed by the inserter input system, the code indicating a number of sheets for a collation to which the document belongs, the one or more sensors further providing a position indication of the document in the inserter input system, wherein responsive to the one or more sensors, the web feeder is arranged to adjust the first velocity as a function of the number of sheets in the collation arriving at the high speed separation transport, whereby a lower number of sheets in the collation corresponds to decreasing the first velocity, and a greater number of sheets in the collation corresponds to increasing the first velocity.