JPS62235153A - Out-of-sheet control method for printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent occurrence of malfunction due to loading of sheets by stopping the printing operation when out of sheets is sensed, while folding in the final page is stored in memory, and by judging whether a blank page is inserted at resumption according to the stored folding. CONSTITUTION:When a sensing device 14 senses that output sheets have gone out, a control part 18 judges if the folding in the sheet is at the crest or bottom, and the result is stored in a memory buffer. When printing becomes possible after reloading of sheets 12, the control part 18 judges folding with perforation on the basis of the memory, and the resultevntually performs a single page feeding associate with no printing action by a photosensitive drum 11 and a transcriptor 17, and thereafter printing action is commenced to provide printability without requiring inversion of the perforated folding. Thus the operator can make sheet replacement without care for folding in the sheet, which should lead to enhancement of the operating effectiveness.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a paper cut-off control method in a print cutting device equipped with a paper cut mechanism, and in particular, it is possible to control the sorting pattern by loading new paper along perforations in a certain direction. The present invention relates to a paper outage control method that does not change the printing or paper cutting position and is suitable for improving the operability of paper replacement.

[Conventional technology]

Generally, when output data from a computer is printed out, it is necessary to cut and sort the printed paper for each job. Particularly in large-scale computer center operations, the amount of printing is enormous, and if the above-mentioned sorting is done manually, the labor costs alone must be enormous.

For this reason, conventionally, a printing mechanism and a paper cutting mechanism have been connected to automatically fold, cut, and sort paper. A printing apparatus of this type equipped with a paper cutting mechanism is described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 55-48338, but the basic technical idea is different from the present invention.

FIG. 2 shows a schematic diagram of a printing device equipped with a paper cutting mechanism. In FIG. 2, 1 is a printing mechanism and 2 is a paper cutting mechanism. Each part of the printing mechanism 1 and paper cutting mechanism 2 is controlled by a control section 18.

FIG. 3 shows the relationship between the input and output of the control section 18.

An electrical latent image of output data is formed on the photosensitive drum 11 by the laser beam 15 under the control of the control section 18 . The electrical latent image is developed by a developing device 16 and transferred to a printing paper 12 by a transfer device 17, after which the paper 12 is thermally fixed by a fixing device 13 and enters the paper cutting mechanism 2. The paper 12 is cut by the cutter 21 according to a cutting command from the control unit 18, and the cut paper 12 is transferred to the stacker 22.
It enters and is taken out. Further, detection of the end of paper is performed by the paper out detection device 14, and the result is transmitted to the control section 18. When the control unit 18 is notified of the end of paper, it prints up to the paper, then stops the printing operation and stops paper feeding. Thereafter, the switch 31 for ejecting the paper 12 is manually pressed, and when the switch 31 is pressed, the control section 18 does not create an electrical latent image on the photosensitive drum 11.
The paper 12 is transferred to the paper cutting mechanism 2 by operating only heat fixing by the heat fixing device 13 . When the switch 31 is used to feed the paper, there is no transfer operation, and the paper enters the stacker 22 and is carried out. The control section 18 can be realized by hard logic control, but since the number of gates would be enormous, it is generally realized by a microcomputer.

Figure 4 is an explanatory diagram of conventional printing and cutting operations.
Here, the left fold (perforation) of the paper 12 will be referred to as the mountain side, and the right fold (perforation) will be referred to as the valley side. FIG. 5 shows the processing flow of the control section 18.

Paper 12 is loaded into printing device 1 manually. At this time, the starting edge of the paper is set at the position of the cutter 21, and the perforations are on the valley side. At this time, the perforation memory in the perforation memory buffer 182 connected to the control unit 18 is also set to the valley side (step 30). A start command has now been received from the host system, and data for JOB 121 is accumulated in the reception buffer 181 (step 31), and the accumulated data is edited into a printable format and sent to the output data accumulation buffer 18.
3 (step 32). When one page or more of data is accumulated in the output data accumulation buffer 183, the control unit 18 instructs the start of printing operation, and the job JOB12L forms an electrical latent image on the photosensitive drum 11 with the laser beam 15. Then, transfer printing is performed on the paper 12 via the developing device 16 and the transfer device 17 (step 33).

After that, steps 31 to 35 are repeated, and J○B12
1 job is printed on the paper 12 and the electrical latent image of the last page of the job is formed on the photosensitive drum 11 by laser light, at that point the sorter sends a control command to the host to print the pattern 123. The data is stored in the reception buffer 181.

The final page of JOBA 121 is either a mountain page or a valley page. For this reason, this determination is always made using a well-known method, and if the last page is a page on the mountain side, a blank page 122 is inserted, and if it is a page on the bottom side, the blank page 122 is not inserted, and the sorting is done by pattern. ”
JOB A” is controlled to print (step 36
~38). Thereafter, a paper cutting command is received from the host and stored in the reception buffer 181.

Now, assuming that the distance from the transfer device 17 to the cutter 21 is equivalent to 4 pages, the sorting will be done in the pattern 123.
Memory memory 18 for cutting pages immediately after printing
4, step 39), printing of JOB124 is 4.
When the pattern 123 is transferred to the paper 12 for one page (step 35), the pattern 123 reaches the cutter 21, and the pattern 123 reaches the cutter 21.
The sorting is cut between page 123 and JOB 124.

It enters the stacker 22 and is carried out (step 40).

After the stacker 22 carries out the paper 12, printing of the JOB 124 is restarted again. In this way, the printing and cutting operations are repeated to perform division in JOB units.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

In actual continuous paper, it is usually 20ΩO page or 300Ω
There are 0 pages and 1 box. Therefore, it becomes a problem to control the peak and valley sides of perforations due to paper shortage.

When paper runs out in the middle of JOBA 121 in FIG. 4, the perforation memory buffer 182
In some cases, it is on the valley side, and in other cases, it is on the mountain side. In addition, in order to continue the printing operation, the printed paper 1
It is necessary to thermally fix the paper 2, eject it to the stacker 22, and load a new paper 12 into the printing device. At this time JOB1
In order to match the peaks and valleys of 21, the operator needs to remember whether the last printed page ended with the peak side page or the valley side page and match the peaks and valleys of the new sheet 12. However, the combination of mountains and valleys using a method that relies on memory is
Operators are prone to making mistakes.

Also, the starting edge of the paper can be in either the crest or trough direction.

For this reason, it is necessary to be able to fold the paper in the stacker 22 in either the crest or trough direction, but this is extremely difficult due to the characteristics of paper, and the development cost is enormous. Therefore, in order to prevent operator errors, when loading paper into a printing device, it is conceivable to always make the perforations in a fixed direction (for example, toward the valley side).

When paper is loaded with perforations in a certain direction like this,
When the paper ends on the valley side, there is no problem with the relationship between peaks and valleys even if new paper is loaded. However, when the paper ends on the mountain side, the mountains and valleys are distorted, and when sorting with JOBA123, the pattern is on the valley side, and the printed side is not facing up.
The cutting position after 3 is to cut on the mountain side, and as a result, the paper is not folded correctly in the stacker 22, resulting in a problem that paper jam occurs.

Therefore, as a solution to this problem, we focused on the fact that when the end of paper is detected by a paper out detector, the next paper to be loaded is on the valley side, and the printing device switches the control for starting the next print to the valley side. be. According to this method, even if the paper 12 ends on the mountain side, the next printing will start from the valley side, which solves the sorting pattern problem and the paper jam problem due to the difference in folds. The last page is transferred to the photosensitive drum, and for sorting, a control instruction to print pattern 123 on the crest side page is received from the host, and after the crests and troughs are determined, the paper end occurs.

The above solution causes another problem. In other words, when the paper is reloaded, it is always on the valley side, or the peaks and valleys have already been determined, so the sorting pattern 123 is printed on the valley side page, and the peaks and valleys are rolled up.

One method for solving this problem is to receive a control instruction from the host to print the sorting pattern 123 on the peak and valley pages after determining that the last page of JOB 121 has been transferred to the paper and the paper is not finished. However, with this method, it is necessary to confirm that the final page has been transferred by the laser beam and the electronic latent image has been transferred to the paper by the transfer device. There is a method of setting the time from the position to the position of the transfer device and checking that the paper has finished after a certain period of time. According to this method, time monitoring occurs for each job, resulting in a decrease in speed.

As stated above, the reality is that none of the conventional methods has been able to provide a satisfactory method.

In addition, although the above description states that it should be adjusted to the valley side, it goes without saying that it may also be adjusted to the mountain side.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a novel paper cutout control method in a printing device equipped with a printing mechanism and a paper cutting mechanism, in which new paper can be loaded at a crease in a fixed direction, regardless of the crease at which the end of printing paper occurs. There is a particular thing.

[Means for solving problems]

The above purpose is to stop the printing operation while memorizing the crease of the last page of paper when the paper is out of paper, and to stop the printing operation according to the memorized crease when restarting the printing operation after loading the paper. This is achieved by determining whether to insert a blank page or not and printing a finishing pattern for the job.

[For production]

When the paper runs out, the perforation memory buffer in the control unit memorizes the crease of the paper, and when printing becomes possible after reloading the paper, determines the crease of the perforation based on the memory and stores the crease of the perforation. Depending on the result, the paper is fed one page without a printing operation, and then the printing operation is started so that printing can be performed without reversing the creases at the perforations. This allows the operator to replace paper without worrying about folds in the paper, thereby improving operability.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below. FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating peak-to-valley alignment according to the present invention.

It is assumed that the printing apparatus has the configuration shown in FIG. 2, and the processing flow of the control section 18 is shown in FIG. In FIG. 5, the part surrounded by the dashed line is the part added according to the present invention.

When the last page of JOB 121 is formed as an electronic latent image on the photosensitive drum 11 by the laser beam 15 (step 33), a control instruction for printing the host sorting pattern 123 on the top page is stored in the reception buffer 181. . When the last page of JOBAI 21 is a valley side page and you are trying to print a blank page, or when the last page is a mountain side page and you are trying to print the sorting pattern 123 without creating a blank page (steps 36 to 38 and 33). , the paper out detector 14 detects the end of the paper 12 and notifies the controller 18 of the end. The control unit 18 causes the perforations stored in the perforation storage buffer 183 to be held and stops printing (step 41).

Thereafter, the switch 31 is pressed manually, the printed paper is ejected to the stacker 22, and a new paper 12 is placed in the printing bag W.
! 11 is loaded. Then, when printing becomes possible (step 42), if the memorized perforation is on the valley side, the last perforation of the new paper and the printed paper will match, so the N printing operation will be started. Sorting is pattern 123
I want to print the blank page that is waiting to be printed so that it is on the mountain side.
” pattern 123 is printed on the mountain side.

On the other hand, if the perforations are on the mountain side, the sorting is pattern 1.
23 is printed on the mountain side, the pages waiting to be printed are sorted into pattern 123. For this reason, the printing mechanism 1 feeds the paper by one page using the paper feeding operation that only uses heat fixing that operates when the paper is ejected (Fig. 1 (B)), and then waits for normal printing after setting the perforation to start printing on the mountain side. Status is page 1
23 (step 44.45).

Therefore, according to this embodiment, the paper can be loaded with perforations in a fixed direction, and the position where the paper is cut is also in a fixed direction.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, the last page of the job is transferred to the photosensitive drum, and the sorting is performed even if the paper runs out after receiving a control instruction from the host to print the pattern, for example, on the crest side page, and determining the crests and troughs. , depending on whether the last page of the job is a mountain side page or a valley side page, the perforations are stored in the perforation memory buffer and printing is stopped, and when loading new paper and starting printing, the memorized perforations are used as needed. Then, the printing operation starts after one page of paper is fed using the paper feeding operation using only heat fixing. Therefore, the operator can always load the paper by perforating it in a certain direction, thereby preventing mistakes. However, since the paper can be cut along the perforations in a certain direction, conventional technology can be used as is, and there is no need to develop new technology.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Fig. 1 is an explanatory diagram of matching the peaks and troughs of paper according to the present invention, Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of a printing device equipped with a paper cutting mechanism used in the present invention, and Fig. 3 is the control unit in Fig. 2 and its input/output. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the processing flow of the control section, and FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating the relationship between conventional paper folds and printing operations. 1...Printing mechanism, 2...Paper cutting mechanism, 11,...
- Photosensitive drum, 12... Output paper, 13... Fixing device, 14... Paper out detector, 15... Laser light, 16... Developing device, 17... Transfer device, 1
8... Control unit, 21... Cutting device, 22... Stacker, 31... Switch, 181... Reception buffer, 182... Perforation memory buffer, Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Figure 4 Ward Figure 5

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) A printing mechanism that prints the output data of a job on continuous paper with alternating peaks and troughs for each page, and a paper cutting mechanism that cuts the paper on which the output data is printed for each job. In a printing device equipped with a printer, when the paper is detected to be out of paper, the printing operation is stopped while the crease of the last page of the paper is memorized, and when the printing operation is resumed after loading new paper, the printing operation is performed according to the memorized crease. 1. A paper outage control method for a printing apparatus, comprising determining whether to insert a blank page without a blank page and printing a sorting pattern related to the job.