JP2002113907A - Controlling method for printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a controlling method for a printer capable of outputting documents certainly in the page order without requiring a special mechanism in the case of outputting the same with a plurality of printer engines simultaneously. SOLUTION: A printer controller 11 determines distribution of printing jobs per page unit to a first printer engine 2 and a second printer engine 3 and the printing schedule including each printing starting time Ts1, Ts2, or the like, and starts data transmission. The distribution of the printing jobs and the schedule including the printing starting times Ts1, Ts2 are determined such that a continuous printing operation can be enabled to the final page in the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a printer control method for dividing a print job and printing in parallel by a plurality of printer engines.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A laser beam printer is generally used for outputting a document in an office due to its printing speed and image quality. In recent years, the output of a color laser beam printer has been increasing with the colorization of documents. ing. In particular, for on-demand printing, etc.,
Since it is necessary to perform a large amount of color printing in a short time, it is required to improve the speed of color printing.

In order to improve the printing speed, it is necessary to significantly improve various performances including the sensitivity of the photosensitive member.
The printer itself becomes very expensive.

On the other hand, for example, JP-A-8-192535 and JP-A-8-337013 propose a method that enables high-speed printing by using a plurality of printer engines and outputting in parallel. ing.

However, in the above example, no consideration is given to the print timing between a plurality of printer engines, and when one print job is divided and printed in parallel, the data processing time and the data transfer time are reduced. There is a possibility that the page order may be changed due to variations in the printing time including the speed.

In particular, when color pages and monochrome pages are mixed, the printing time including the data processing time and the data transfer speed is significantly different between color and monochrome, so that the page order may be interchanged. growing.

[0007]

In order to solve such a problem, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-194910 proposes a method of sorting printed materials printed out from each printer engine by a paper discharge control unit in page order. I have.

However, if the above-described paper discharge control unit is provided, there is a problem that the size and cost of the apparatus cannot be avoided.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a printer control method capable of reliably outputting pages in order without requiring a special mechanism when a plurality of printer engines output data in parallel. .

[0010]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention comprises a plurality of printer engines, divides a print job into pages and assigns the divided print jobs to the plurality of printer engines. In the printer control method of performing printing in parallel by the engines, the printing by the plurality of printer engines is started when the plurality of printer engines determine that the allocated pages can be continuously printed. It is like that.

According to the above control method, the printing time and the output timing of each page are determined by the continuous printing of each printer engine, so that it is possible to output the pages in the order of the scheduled pages.

Further, the present invention provides the above control method,
When any one of the plurality of printer engines becomes unable to perform continuous printing, the printer engine that has become unable to continuously print is paused for a predetermined period of time, and the other printer engines are similarly brought into a printing pause state. It was made.

[0013] According to the above arrangement, even if any one of the printer engines becomes unable to perform continuous printing, each printer engine similarly stops printing, so that the output order is not changed, and the output order is reliably changed. It becomes possible to output in page order.

[0014]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of a printer according to an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 denotes a printer according to an embodiment of the present invention, which has two printer engines, a first printer engine 2 and a second printer engine 3, which can be operated independently. It is possible.

Outputs from the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 are discharged to the upper discharge tray 6 and the lower discharge tray 7 by the discharge rollers 4 and 5, respectively, and are stacked.

When one print job is distributed to two printer engines 2 and 3 for printing, it is desirable to collect outputs on one tray. Therefore, the printer 1 is provided with a paper discharge switching mechanism 8 and a transport roller 9 for discharging the output from the second printer engine 3 to the upper tray 6. When the output is collected on the upper tray 6, the paper discharge direction is switched upward by the paper discharge switching mechanism 8, and the output is discharged to the upper tray 6 via the transport roller 9 and the paper discharge roller 4.

The first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 perform printing according to the following process.

First, a latent image is recorded on the photoreceptor belts 201 and 301 by laser beams from the optical units 202 and 302, and toner images are formed by black (K) developing units 203 and 303. Transfer drum 2
07, 307 (primary transfer).

When a color image is formed, cyan (C) developing units 204 and 30 are used instead of the K developing units 203 and 303.
4, the above process is repeated by using magenta (M) developing units 205 and 305 and yellow (Y) developing units 206 and 306 to sequentially form a C toner image, an M toner image, and a Y toner image on the intermediate transfer drum. KCMY on 207, 307
Are superimposed on each other. The photoreceptor belt 2
The peripheral lengths of the intermediate transfer drums 01 and 301 and the intermediate transfer drums 207 and 307 are slightly longer than the maximum length of the recording paper, and an image for one color is formed by one rotation.

Next, the recording paper fed from the paper feed trays 210 and 310 by the paper feed rollers 209 and 309 is transferred to the intermediate transfer drum 20 by the transfer rollers 208 and 308.
7, 307, and press the intermediate transfer drums 207, 30
7 is transferred onto recording paper (secondary transfer).

Thereafter, the toner images are fixed on the recording paper by the fixing devices 211 and 311 and are discharged to the discharge trays 6 and 7 via the discharge rollers 4 and 5.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a printing process timing chart during continuous printing of color pages.

From the start of the latent image formation to the completion of paper discharge, it takes a little less than six rotations of the photosensitive belt, but since each process is performed by pipeline processing, during continuous printing, one page of the photosensitive belt is rotated every four revolutions. Print output is obtained. Further, once printing is started, the photoreceptor belts 201 and 301 and the intermediate transfer drums 207 and 307 cannot be stopped at least until the sixth rotation when the secondary transfer ends, and the printing timing is arbitrarily adjusted during this time. It is not possible. It is only possible to pause the formation and development of the latent image in units of one rotation (hereinafter, idle rotation). During this time, the photosensitive belts 201 and 301 and the intermediate transfer drum 207 are used in order to continue the operation below the primary transfer. , 307 are rotating.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a control unit of the printer according to the present embodiment.

A print job sent from a personal computer (PC) or a workstation (WS) via a network or the like is input to a printer controller 11 via an interface 10 and temporarily stored in a memory 12 or a storage device 13.

The printer controller 11 has a memory 12
Alternatively, the print job stored in the storage device 13 is read out, developed into raster data, and stored in the memory 12 or the storage device 13 again. Thereafter, based on the raster data stored in the memory 12 or the storage device 13, the print job is distributed to the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 in page units, and the printing of the respective print start times Ts1 and Ts2 is performed. A schedule is determined, and transmission of raster data is started. The distribution of print jobs and the schedules such as the print start times Ts1 and Ts2 allow the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 to continuously print up to the last page without changing the order of the pages to be discharged. Determined to be. The details of the schedule determination method will be described later.

In a printer capable of high-speed printing as in this embodiment, since print jobs are concentrated, print processing such as reception of print jobs, development into raster data, and scheduling is accelerated by pipeline processing. ing. Therefore, hereinafter, raster data is already prepared when the print schedule is determined, and the time required for the printer engine controllers 14 and 15 to complete the print preparation is only the data transfer time.

Printer engine controllers 14 and 15
Then, the raster data sent from the printer controller 11 is stored in the page memories 16 and 17, and printing by the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 is started by a print start command from the printer controller 11. Also, the printer engine controller 1
The printers 4 and 15 transmit failure information such as a paper jam or an out of paper as a status to the printer controller 11 as needed.

In the above configuration, the printer controller 11 determines a print schedule so that the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 perform continuous printing, and performs distribution of print jobs and control of print timing. , It is possible to reliably output in the page order.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a timing chart when the printing timing is not controlled. Here, it is assumed that the photoconductor belt rotation cycle is 5 seconds, the color page printing cycle is 20 seconds, and 10 pages are printed in all colors.

1P (page) to 10P (page) in FIG.
Simply indicates the temporal order of the printed pages. Actually, the printing order differs depending on the paper ejection configuration of the printer,
In the face-down type, it is necessary to print and discharge the sheets from the first page in the face-down type and from the last page in the face-up type. The necessary rearrangement is performed by the printer controller 11.

The first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 have a difference in the length of the paper transport path to the upper paper discharge tray 6, so that the time from the latent image formation to the paper discharge is different.

Printer engine controllers 14 and 15
Immediately after the raster data for one page is transferred and the preparation for printing is completed, the printing operation starting with the latent image formation is started.
Subsequent printing is determined by the transfer time of the raster data. In particular, when the transfer time of the raster data is longer than the print cycle of one page, the print timing is shifted, and the printing order is changed as shown in FIG. I will. In the example of FIG. 4, 4P and 5P are discharged almost simultaneously,
The order of 6P and 7P, and 8P and 9P is interchanged.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a timing chart when printing timing is controlled according to the embodiment of the present invention. Here, the conditions other than the print timing control are the same as those in the example of FIG.

The print start timing is delayed by the print start times Ts1 and Ts2 so that all pages can be continuously printed by the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3, but the print completion time is the same as that in FIG. Same or slightly faster.

As the printing start times Ts1 and Ts2, the minimum values satisfying all the following conditions are selected.

[0038]

Ts1 = Tp1 (1) (Equation 1) Te1 (i) ≦ Tp1 (i) (i = 1, n1) (Equation 2) Ts2 = Tp2 (1) (Equation 3) Te2 (i) ≦ Tp2 (I) (i = 1, n2) (Equation 4) To (i) ≦ To (i + 1) (i = 1, n-1) (Equation 5) Here, n is the total number of printed pages, and n1 and n2 are The number of print pages assigned to the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3, respectively.

[0039]

## EQU2 ## n = n1 + n2 (Equation 6) Tp1 (i) and Te1 (i) are the print start time and print preparation completion time of the i-th printing in the first printer engine 2, and Tp2 (i) and Te2 (i) are the second
The print start time and the print preparation completion time of the i-th print in the printer engine 3 are shown. To (i) is the i-th
This is the page discharge time, and in the example of FIG. 5, it is set to be discharged at equal time intervals of 10 seconds.

Each printing start time tp1 (i), tp
2 (i) interval

[0041]

## EQU3 ## Tp1 (i + 1) -tp1 (i) (i = 1,
n1-1) Tp2 (i + 1) -tp2 (i) (i = 1, n2-
1) is set to, for example, 20 seconds in the example of FIG. 5 so as to perform continuous printing.

Further, the print preparation completion time Te1 (i),
Te2 (i) is calculated and predicted from the size of the raster data of each page and the data transfer speed. If the data transfer speed fluctuates and it takes longer than expected,
Any one of the expressions (1) to (4) is not satisfied;
In other words, there is a case where printing preparation cannot be made in time.
FIG. 6 shows an example of a timing chart in the case where the printing timing is shifted due to the transfer delay.

In FIG. 6, on the second printer engine 3 side,
The data transfer of the eighth page (8P) is delayed, and the preparation for printing cannot be made in time, so that continuous printing is impossible. In such a case, the printer engine controller 15 of the second printer engine 3
The status of the continuous printing disabled state is reported as a status, and idle printing is performed until the printing preparation is completed.

The printer controller 11 sends an idle command to the printer engine controller 14 of the first printer engine 2 to cause the first printer engine 2 to execute the idle rotation as many times as the number of times executed by the second printer engine 3.

As described above, when the preparation for printing cannot be made in time by one of the printer engines, the idling operation is similarly performed by both printer engines, so that the order of paper discharge can be prevented from being disordered. In the example of FIG. 6, the first printer engine 2 side makes a slip between pages, but this may be inserted in the middle of the page.

In order to prevent idling as described above, for example,

[0047]

Te ′ = K × Te, K> 1 (Equation 7)

[0048]

## EQU00005 ## In the form of Te '= Te + Td, Td> 0 (Equation 8), the recalculation may be performed so that the print preparation completion time has a margin.

In the above-described embodiment, only the case where color pages are continuously printed has been described. However, in practice, continuous printing of monochrome (single color) pages or color pages and monochrome pages are included in a print job. Often mixed. Hereinafter, such a case will be described.

FIG. 7 shows an example of a print process timing chart for continuous printing of monochrome pages.

In continuous printing of monochrome pages, secondary transfer, fixing and discharge are performed continuously, unlike continuous printing of color pages. Therefore, when paper is discharged to the upper paper discharge tray 6, the outputs from the first printer engine 2 and the second printer engine 3 overlap. FIG. 8 shows an example of the discharge timing at the time of continuous printing of monochrome pages.

In FIG. 8, reference numerals 18 and 20 denote outputs on the lower side (from the second printer engine 3), and reference numerals 19 and 21 denote outputs on the upper side (from the first printer engine 2). Also, L is the distance between the discharges during continuous printing of the maximum recording paper, L1 is the distance from the rear end of the upper (n-1) page output to the front end of the lower n page output, and L2 is the lower n. This is the distance from the rear end of the page output to the upper (n-1) page output front end.

In order to make the stacked outputs clear without disturbing the sheet discharge order, it is necessary to satisfy L1> 0 and L2> 0. Therefore, for example, the discharge time To (i) is set so that L1 = L2 = L / 2.

FIG. 9 shows an example of scheduling when color pages and monochrome pages are mixed. In the example of FIG. 9, as shown in FIG.
The output that is overlapped at substantially the same timing by the second printer engine 3 and the second printer engine 3
Is output first. Also, the fourth, fifth and eighth pages indicated by m in the figure are monochrome pages, and the other pages indicated by c are color pages.

In the example of FIG. 9, idle rotation is partially inserted in order to match the paper discharge timing. If the discharge timing cannot be adjusted in continuous printing as in this example, idle rotation is appropriately inserted.

In the above embodiment, print jobs are scheduled collectively, but depending on the sizes of the page memories 16 and 17, raster data cannot be stored until the start of printing. In such a case,
The print job may be divided according to the sizes of the page memories 16 and 17, and scheduling may be performed for each of the divided print jobs. Further, regardless of the size of the page memories 16 and 17, when the size of the print job is large, scheduling becomes complicated.
The job may be divided into a plurality of jobs to simplify the scheduling.

Further, in the above-described embodiment, the print preparation completion time is determined only by the transfer time. However, this is not the case when the rasterization is performed in the printer engine controllers 14 and 15 for a print job. According to the processing method of (1), the print preparation completion time is determined including the development time of the print job into the raster data and other processing times.

In the above-described embodiment, since the idling is reduced as much as possible and the printing operation is performed in a concentrated manner, the power consumption can be reduced. This method is also effective for reducing power consumption when printing is performed by a single printer engine.

[0059]

As described above, according to the present invention, when it is determined that a plurality of printer engines can continuously print the assigned pages, the printing by the printer engine is started. In this case, the printing time and the output timing of each page are determined by continuous printing by each printer engine, so that it is possible to reliably output the pages in the order of the scheduled pages.

Further, when any one of the plurality of printer engines becomes unable to perform continuous printing, printing is suspended for a predetermined period, and the other printer engines are similarly brought into the printing suspension state, so that any one of the printer engines can be stopped. Even when continuous printing becomes impossible, each printer engine similarly pauses printing, so that the output order can be reliably output in the order of the scheduled pages without changing the output order.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a printer according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of a print process timing chart during continuous printing of color pages.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a control unit of the printer according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a timing chart when print timing control is not performed.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of a timing chart when print timing is controlled according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of a timing chart when a print timing is shifted due to a transfer delay.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating an example of a print process timing chart during continuous printing of monochrome pages.

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating an example of a paper ejection timing during continuous printing of monochrome pages.

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example of scheduling when color pages and monochrome pages are mixed.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Printer, 2 ... 1st printer engine, 3 ... 2nd printer engine, 11 ... Printer controller, 14 ...
First printer engine controller, 15 ... second printer engine controller, 16, 17 ... page memory.

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuing from the front page (72) Inventor Taichiro Yamashita 502, Kandachi-cho, Tsuchiura-shi, Ibaraki F-term in Machinery Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd. 2C087 AB05 AB08 AC08 BA07 CA13 CB02 2C187 AC07 AE11 5B021 EE02 LG07

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A method of controlling a printer having a plurality of printer engines, dividing a print job into pages, assigning the divided jobs to the plurality of printer engines, and performing printing in parallel by the plurality of printer engines. Wherein the printer engine starts printing by the plurality of printer engines when it is determined that the assigned pages can be continuously printed.