Patent ID: 8302949

Claim:
An apparatus for producing book blocks, said apparatus comprising: a sheet web dispensing station to dispense at least one sheet web that moves in longitudinal direction and can be imprinted; a printing station, including: two cylinders which rotate with a circumferential speed that corresponds to the movement speed of the sheet web and which function to support in a contacting manner the sheet web with their circumferential surfaces over a specified angle region; contactless operating printing heads assigned to each cylinder, arranged side by side at a distance to the circumferential surface of the associated cylinder and positioned at least essentially transverse to the circumferential and rotational direction of the associated cylinder, wherein the printing heads have faces oriented substantially tangential to the associated cylinder and wherein the center lines through the printing heads are oriented to project substantially radial to the circumferential surface of the associated cylinder; a guiding device to guide the sheet web so that when the web rests on one cylinder, one side of the sheet web may be imprinted and when the web rests on the other cylinder, the other side of the sheet web may be imprinted; and a web tension device to generate a desired web tension in the sheet web; a cutting station arranged downstream of the printing station and including: a longitudinal cutter operative to cut the printed sheet web in a longitudinal direction; and a cross-cutter arranged downstream or upstream of the longitudinal cutter to cut the printed sheet web in a transverse direction, wherein the cutting station produces sheets arranged in at least two partial webs extending in the longitudinal direction, the sheets having a width and length that correspond to a predetermined height and width of pages of the book block to be produced; an overlapping station arranged downstream of the cutting station to arrange the sheets in an overlapping formation; and a collecting station to collect the sheets of each partial web into stacks that form the book blocks, wherein the collecting station includes a number of compartments to collect the sheets of each partial web into book blocks, wherein the number of compartments corresponds to a number of the partial webs.