Patent ID: 8540226

Claim:
A method for operating a sheet handling system including the processing steps of feeding singulated sheets from a stack of sheet material and accumulating select sheets into a completed collation of sheets along a conveyance feed path, the method operative to minimize the conveyance feed path of the sheet handling system and comprising the steps of: determining a location of a next collation mark on select sheets of the stack of material to be processed; selecting an operating mode based upon the proximity of the next collation mark to a leading or trailing edge of each of the select sheets, and processing the singulated sheets in a first operating mode when the next collation mark is proximal to the leading edge of each of the select sheets, and in a second operating mode, when the next collation mark is proximal to a trailing edge of each of the select sheets, and buffering each of the select sheets along the conveyance feed path to change the spatial relationship between each of the select sheet and each completed collation of sheets along the feed path.