Patent ID: 7277114

Claim:
An image recording apparatus comprising: a recording material loading unit, loaded with a recording material roll unit, for advancing plural web-shaped recording materials along a feeding path, wherein said recording material roll unit includes plural recording material rolls, constituted by said plural recording materials, disposed adjacent to one another in a web width direction of said recording materials, and associated in a manner rotatable with one another; a cutter for cutting said plural recording materials at one time to obtain plural recording sheets; and an image recording unit for recording an image frame on said recording sheets and at one time in said web width direction, wherein said plural recording materials are wound on a common axial core and positioned away from each other at a predetermined interval, wherein said recording material rolls comprise N recording material rolls; and said apparatus further comprising a control unit for determining whether a total number T of prints to be produced from image frames according to a first customer order is a multiple of N; wherein if said total number T is not a multiple of N, then said image frames are sorted into a first group having NxA image frames and a second group having B image frame, where A and B satisfy a condition of T=N×A+B, A is an integer, and B is an integer smaller than N; said first group is subjected to printing in a combined manner per N image frames; said second group is subjected to printing in such a manner that an unused one of said recording sheets unused in printing for said second group is used for printing at least one of said image frames derived from said first group, and N recording sheets to be used at one time are provided with image frames from a single one of said first and succeeding customer orders.