JPH0263873A - Page printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To automatically count a necessary number of printed papers to discharge the same by performing control so that the printing papers of the same page are successively discharged to the respective bins of a multistage delivery apparatus one at a time when an automatic counting mode is indicated. CONSTITUTION:When an automatic counting mode key 53 is pushed, 'automatic counting mode' is displayed on an LCD display 51 to set an automatic counting mode. When a sorter having six stack bins is used to execute the multi-copy of two pages at every four papers, the video data of the first page among the video data on a video buffer is successively printed on four papers and the respective printed papers are successively delivered to the first - fourth stack bins one at a time while the stack bins are changed over. Subsequently, the video data of the second pages is also printed on four papers in the same way and the respective printed papers are successively delivered to the first - fourth stack bins while the stack bins are changed over. Therefore, the printed papers can be automatically counted to be discharged.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a page printer such as a laser printer equipped with a multi-stage paper ejection device.

[Conventional technology]

Page printers such as laser printers store data in memory based on character code data and image data transferred from a host such as a personal computer or word processor.
Video data is created for each page, and an image is formed using the data using an electrophotographic method and printed on paper.

When a multi-stage paper discharge device having a large number of stack bins or a plurality of paper discharge units is provided, the printed paper is discharged to the stack bin or paper discharge unit designated by the host.

In addition, a page printer with multi-copy function has 1 copy function.
Pages of video data can be printed on multiple sheets of paper, but each print sheet is still ejected to the same stack bin or paper output section designated by the host for that data.

Further, the host can only specify paper ejection for each page of data.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

Therefore, if you want to use this multi-copy function to print multiple copies of each page to create multiple copies of a document, with conventional page printers, you have to specify from the host the stack bin from which each page is output. However, since multiple sheets of the same page are output to the same stack bin, I had to sort them one by one and collate them afterward.

Therefore, when the number of pages and copies increases, there is a problem in that it takes a lot of effort and time to collate them.

Therefore, instead of using the multi-copy function, it may be possible to send the same page data from the host repeatedly for the required number of sheets by changing only the paper output bin specification.
This creates an inconvenience in that the load placed on the host becomes too large and the printing speed becomes slow due to wasted time.

This invention was made in view of the above points, and allows efficient multi-copying without placing an unnecessary burden on the host.
Moreover, it is an object of the present invention to automatically collate and discharge papers into a required number of printers 1.

[Means to solve the problem]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention has a multi-stage paper ejecting device A as shown in the functional block diagram in FIG. In the printer P, when the automatic collation mode designation means B and the automatic collation mode is designated by the means B, print sheets of the same page to be printed sequentially are sequentially placed into each bin of the multi-stage paper discharge device A, one sheet at a time. A control means C for controlling the multi-stage paper ejection device A to eject the paper is provided.

[For production]

In the page printer according to the present invention configured as described above, when the automatic collation mode is specified by the automatic collation mode specifying means B, the control means C controls the printing paper of the same page to be printed sequentially. The multi-stage paper discharge device A discharges one sheet to each bin.

Therefore, without having to send the same page of data from the host multiple times by changing only the output bin designation, it is possible to automatically sort, output, and collate the set number of print sheets for each page into each bin. .

Therefore, multi-copying can be performed efficiently without placing an unnecessary burden on the host, and there is no need for manual collation work after printing.

〔Example〕

Embodiments of the present invention will be specifically described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 2 is a sectional view schematically showing the internal mechanism of a laser printer that is an embodiment of the present invention.

This laser printer consists of a laser printer main body 1 and a table (including a duplex unit) 2.

Main unit 1 has two upper and lower paper feed trays (cassette 1~) 3°4
It is equipped with a multi-stage sheet discharge device (hereinafter referred to as a "sorter") 8 which is removably equipped with a large number of stack bins 6 and a base stacker 7 for discharging a large amount of sheets.

Furthermore, the main body 1 includes a photoreceptor drum 9, which constitutes an image forming section of a printer engine, which will be described later. Charging section 10, optical writing section 1
1. Developing section 12. A transfer section 13, a fixing section 14, a paper ejection conveyance section 15 consisting of a large number of conveyance rollers, a paper guide plate, a conveyance path switching claw 22, etc., a power supply section 16, a printer controller 17, a board for an engine driver 18, etc. are provided. ing.

On the other hand, the table 2 is equipped with a large quantity paper feed tray 5, and inside there is a reversing section 19 and a reversing paper feeding section 20 for double-sided printing, which are composed of a large number of transport rollers, a paper guide plate, a transport path switching claw 23, etc. It is set up.

When a print sequence is started by a command from the printer controller 17, the top paper tray 3. Sketch paper tray 4. Alternatively, paper feeding is started from one of the selected large-volume paper feed trays 5, and the paper is temporarily stopped with the leading edge of the paper being held between the pair of registration rollers 21.

On the other hand, the photosensitive drum 9 rotates in the direction of the arrow in FIG. It is irradiated and exposed while scanning to form a latent image.

The developing section 12 develops it with toner, and the transfer section 13
The print paper is transferred onto a paper fed at a predetermined timing and heated and fixed in the fixing unit 14.
The paper is conveyed to the sorter 8 through the printer, and is discharged to a designated stack bin.

When double-sided printing is selected, after printing on one side (front side), first move the paper to the reversing section 19 in the table 2.
send to.

Then, the sheet fed into the reversing section 19 is reversed in its conveying direction, conveyed to the reversing sheet feeding section 20 and kept on standby, and then fed into the main body 1 at a predetermined timing, and the other side (' jA side), and conveys it to the sorter 8 through the sheet discharge conveyance section 15, and discharges it to the designated stack bin in the same manner as described above.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the printer controller 1-roller of this laser printer.

The printer controller 17 includes a host interface 31 for connecting to a host as an external interface, and a font cartridge 32 as an internal interface.
a cartridge interface 33 for connection with the operation panel 50; and a panel interface 3 for connection with the operation panel 50.
4 and an engine interface 36 for connection to a printer engine 35.

In addition, as a controller section, the CPU";7. ROM38
．． RAM 40 and data control section 41. Address control section 4
2. A video control section 43 is provided.

The host interface 31 is an interface for connecting to a host such as an office computer, personal computer, word processor, data processing device 2, image processing device, etc., and various parallel interfaces or serial interfaces are selected depending on the host to be connected.

The host interface 31 receives various data such as character codes, control codes, and control commands from the host, and transmits control information such as printer status to the host.

Further, the font cartridge 32 is installed in a font cartridge slot (not shown) as a cartridge storing font data of various typefaces in a ROM.

Furthermore, each part within this printer controller 17 is interconnected by a path line consisting of an address bus, a control bus, and a data bus.

The CPU 37 is a general-purpose 16-bit or 32-bit microcomputer consisting of a CPU, a ROM, a RAM, and //o, etc., and is in charge of overall control of the entire printer controller 1-roller.

The ROM 38 is a read-only memory and stores various programs for controlling the CPU 37, resident fonts, etc.

RAM4Q is a large capacity random access memory, and as shown in FIG. 4, input buffer 401. Page buffer 402. Video buffer 403. It is used for the font file 404, etc., and is also used for the system memory used by the CPU"!17.

The data control unit 41 is used when creating video data in the video buffer 403 based on the data in the page buffer 402.

The address control unit 42 controls the DMA (Direct Memory Ac
cess ) address, a video address control section for sequentially outputting video data created in the video buffer 403 in synchronization with a video clock (WCLK), and the like.

The video control unit 43 controls the video data created in the video buffer 403 to be processed by the CPU 37, for example, in three units.
When 2 bits are read out, the parallel video data is converted to serial video data and output to the printer engine 35.

The printer engine 35 includes a mechanical section including the photoreceptor drum 9 shown in FIG. The engine driver 18 controls the sequence operations of the image forming section and paper conveying section and the video modulation signal to the optical writing side section 11 in response to commands and video data from the printer controller 17.

The engine driver 18 also controls the sequence of the sorter 8, and also functions as the control means C shown in FIG.

Next, according to the configuration of various buffers and files on the RAM 40, respective processing operations will be specifically explained.

Data (character code) from the host to RAM40.

When a control code, control command) is transferred, the data is first temporarily stored in the input buffer 401 to adjust the data processing speed of this laser printer and the data transmission speed from the host. Make it.

Next, the data held in the input buffer 401 is extracted, and the data is stored in the page buffer 402, including the character type, font type, etc. for each character.
Print position on the page W (X.

It stores page layout information such as Y coordinate) and data to which information blocks to be described later are added.

Next, when the page-by-page data is stored in the page buffer 402, the layout of the page-by-page video data to be created in the video buffer 403 is determined based on the control code and print position information, and According to the layout, fonts according to the character type and font type for each character according to the character code are collectively transferred from the font file 404 by DMA to create video data, and then the printer engine 35
Output to.

Furthermore, on this video buffer 403, as shown in FIG. 5(A), a small memory area is secured in addition to the video data creation area (image area), and in that area, as shown in FIG. 5(B), The numbers of the specified paper feed tray and paper ejection stacker (including stack bins), the number of copies for multi-copying, etc. are stored as page attribute information blocks.

Note that when performing normal printing, that is, when printing only on one sheet of paper as shown in Figure 6 (B) based on one page of data from the host as shown in Figure 6 (A), , one page of video data and information blocks from the video buffer 403 and a start command for printer 1 are output to the printer engine 35, but the memory area of the output video data and information blocks is used for the next page. It is released as soon as the printing of one page is completed so that video data can be created.

You can also print using the multi-copy function.

In other words, when printing on multiple sheets of paper as shown in FIG. 7(b) based on one page of data from the host as shown in FIG. 7(a), the data is sent to the printer engine 35 until the set number of sheets is reached. Since the video data and information block of the same page and the print start command are repeatedly output, the memory area for the video data and information block is released when the set number of sheets have been printed.

FIG. 8 is a layout diagram showing an example of the operation panel 50 shown in FIG.

This operation panel 50 includes an LCD display 51, a multi-copy key 52 . Automatic collation mode key 53. It is provided with a reset key 54 and a numeric keypad 55 consisting of 10 keys "O to 9".

It should be noted that various other keys and indicators may also be provided, but they are not directly related to the functions of this embodiment, so their illustrations are omitted.

The LCD display 51 is, for example, a character display of 2 lines x 32 characters, and can display messages corresponding to each key and various other messages.

The multi-copy key 54 is a key for setting multi-copy mode, and when pressed, the number of copies of the same page (
It is now possible to specify the number of copies during automatic collation, using the numeric keypad 55.
When the button is pressed, the number is displayed on the display 51, and this number is set as the number of prints.

The automatic collation mode key 53 is the automatic collation mode specifying means B shown in FIG. Set.

The reset I-key 54 is a key for resetting the mode and number of sheets set by each of these keys,
When this reset key 54 is pressed, the setting mode name displayed on the display 51.

The number of prints disappears and the printer returns to normal print mode, which prints each page one by one.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be specifically explained with reference to FIG. 9 and subsequent figures.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram showing control processing by the engine driver of this embodiment.

This routine starts when the power is turned on, performs initial settings and checks the status, and if there is no abnormality, then in step 1 it is determined whether or not multi-copying is being performed.

Then, if it is not a multi-copy, normal printing is executed, and if it is a multi-copy, the number of copies N (the number of copies of the same page to be printed specified by the numeric keypad 55 in FIG. 8) is read in step 2, and the stack bin number n is read in step 3. r
Make it lJ.

Next, in step 4, it is determined whether or not the automatic collation mode is selected.
In the automatic collation mode, the nth stack bin is selected in step 5, and the stack bin number n is updated to "rn+1" in step 6, and then the process proceeds to step 8.

If the mode is not automatic collation mode, the stack bin designated by the host is selected in step 7.

Then, in step 8, printing is executed, and the sorter 8 shown in FIG. 2 is controlled to discharge the printed paper to the selected stack bin 6.

Next, in step 9, the number of copies N is set to rN-IJ, and then in step 10, it is determined whether or not the number of copies N is rQJ.

If the number of copies N is not rQJ, the process returns to step 4 and repeats this routine until it becomes "0", and when it reaches rQJ, the process proceeds to step 11 to determine whether there is data for the first page.

Then, if there is data for the next page, the process returns to step 2, and the processes up to step 10 are repeated for the set number of copies, and when there is no more data for the primary page, the entire process of this routine ends.

Therefore, for example, if you use a sorter with 6 stack bins and perform multi-copy of 2 pages of 4 sheets each in automatic collation mode, the 2 pages on the video buffer as shown in Figure 10 (a) Of the video data, first print out the first page of video data on four sheets of paper in sequence, and then place each print paper into the stack bins No. 1 to No. 4 as shown in the figure (a). While switching stack bins, the stack bins are sequentially discharged one by one.

Next, the second page of video data is printed out on four sheets of paper in the same way as the first page, and each print paper is sequentially printed on one sheet while switching the stack bins from the 1st stack bin to the 4th stack bin. Discharge one by one.

In this way, the set number of print sheets for each page are sequentially delivered to each stack bin of the sorter, so each stack bin receives print sheets collated in the order of the pages, so they can be used after printing is completed. This eliminates the need for people to manually collate documents, reducing the amount of effort and time required.

In addition, if the automatic collation mode is not specified, if the host specifies that the first page will be placed in the stack bin number 1 and the second page will be placed in the stack bin number 2, the result will be as shown in Figure 11 (a). First, of the two pages of video data, the first page of video data is printed out on four sheets of paper, and all of the print sheets are discharged to the number 1 stack bin as shown in the same figure (a). do.

Next, the second page of video data is similarly printed out on four sheets of paper, and all of the printed sheets are discharged to the No. 2 stack bin.

Therefore, when printing a required number of pages of different documents or the like, it is convenient because they are automatically sorted.

In this embodiment, the designation of the multi-copy and automatic collation modes and the number of copies at that time are respectively set by input operations from the operation panel 50 shown in FIG. It may also be possible to specify it using a control command from.

Further, although an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a laser printer has been described, the present invention can be applied not only to other page printers such as an LED printer, but also to electrophotographic image forming apparatuses such as a digital copying machine and a facsimile machine. It's something you get.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the page printer of the present invention, simply by specifying multi-copy and automatic collation mode,
The set number of sheets are printed for each page, and the printed sheets are automatically collated and ejected into each stack bin of the multi-stage paper output device, so the required number of copies of documents can be printed without placing any extra burden on the host. can be printed efficiently.

Therefore, unnecessary labor and time required for collating work after printing can be saved.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the basic configuration of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a sectional view schematically showing the internal mechanism of a laser printer according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the printer controller, and FIG. A block diagram showing the functional configuration. FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of the memory area of the video buffer 403 in FIG. 4. FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of normal printing. FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of printing when using the multi-copy function. , FIG. 8 is a layout diagram showing an example of the operation panel 50 in FIG. 3, FIG. 9 is a flow diagram showing control processing by the engine driver of this embodiment, and FIG. 10 is a print by multi-copy in automatic collation mode. FIG. 11 is an explanatory diagram of the state of paper discharge in a multi-copy mode that is not in automatic collation mode. Tracer printer body 6... Stack bin 8...
Sorter 17...Printer controller 18...
・Engine driver 35...Printer engine 37...CPU (microcomputer) 38...
・ROM (read-on memory) 40...RAM (random access memory) 50...operation panel 51
... LCD display 52 ... Multi-copy key 53 ... Automatic collation mode key 54 ... Reset key 55 ... Numeric keypad Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 8 (A) (A) 6th! II j Figure 7 (I)

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A page printer equipped with a multi-stage paper ejection device and having a multi-copy function for printing one page of data on a set number of sheets of paper, comprising an automatic collation mode specifying means, and an automatic collation mode specifying means by the means. and a control means for controlling the multi-stage paper ejection device so that, when a collation mode is specified, print sheets of the same page to be printed sequentially are ejected one sheet at a time to each bin of the multi-stage paper ejection device. A page printer featuring