GB1124415A - Method for producing printed publications - Google Patents

Abstract

1,124,415. Collating sheets. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. 26 Jan., 1967 [8 Feb., 1966], No. 4002/67. Heading B6H. A method of producing a printed publication having printed sheets comprises printing a repeated portion on both sides of a web W, Figs. 1 and 2, each repeat having a plurality of different page sheets arranged along the length of the web and a plurality across the web, perforating the sheets along the edges of the sheets if desired by a punch drum 26, cutting the web longitudinally into strips along the sheet edges by rotary cutters 32, cutting the web laterally into press sheets and further into page sheets by rotary knives 36, 38, feeding the sheets by belts 40 into overlapping relationship on slower-moving conveyor belts 44 below tension rollers 56, and thence into stacks side by side on a platform 58, each stack comprising sheets from one lateral position on the web arranged alternately in order of the page sheets. The stacks are then placed in hoppers 68 at collator feed stations 60, Fig. 3, and at each station sheets are fed in succession from the bottom of the stack by a rotary suction device 70 on to support surfaces 64 of a moving belt 62 having collating fingers 88 so that new stacks are formed on the surfaces 64, each comprising in turn a plurality of sheets from each station according to the number of page sheets displaced longitudinally along the web in each press sheet. In one'form, if there are two such page sheets, alternate fingers 88 are removed. Alternately, the belt is fed intermittently, being stationary while one sheet 'from a station is fed and moving when the second is fed. Alternatively, the feed from the stations is made twice as fast or the belt travels at half speed. If the publication contains an odd number of sheets, the last station 60 has a stack of one kind of sheet only, and the suction device 70 is operative only each second cycle. 'Some of the belts 44 adjacent the inner edges of the outer sheets may be driven faster by means of larger drive rollers 52 to avoid lateral interleaving. An electrical sensing device at each station 60 detects absence of a sheet, and a further sensing device 92, Fig. 3, detects that the correct sheet is being fed from the stack by sensing cheek marks or perforations on or in some of the sheets. In another form, for collating two halves (or several sections) of a book, each repeat comprises non-sequential page sheets. spaced longitudinally, bearing a similar relationship to the two halves, e.g. pages 1-2 and 33-34 where the halves consist of 32 sheets each, and collating one sheet from each stack to form a new stack; The new stacks are the fed by a conveyor 98 and belts 100, Fig. 7, to a turning delivery bed 104 and thence on to a conveyor 106 of a a stitching machine 108.