Patent ID: 8388245

Claim:
A printing apparatus with capabilities for printing on a separate sheet and for book printing on a block of pre-bound pages, the apparatus comprising: a support structure comprising two height-adjustable tables, the heights of the tables being separately adjusted, for supporting the block in two adjacent stacks, so that when a page is turned from atop a first stack to an adjacent second stack, the two adjacent stacks present substantially co-planar printable top surfaces, and the heights being concurrently adjusted to maintain substantially equal heights for supporting the separate sheet; an automatic page-turning mechanism for redeploying a top page from the first stack to the second stack; a cutting device for cutting a binding connection that connects the first stack to the second stack; a printing head; and a relative motion mechanism for providing relative motion between the printing head and a page of the block of printable pages or a sheet of the separate sheets while printing.