Method and system for synchronizing items using position compensation

摘要

The present applications relates to techniques and equipment to control the alignment of cut sheets of paper that are transported in parallel in an inserting system prior to their assembly into a document and inserted into an envelope. The alignment of the parallel sheets is adjusted by commanding incremental position changes to servo drive motors used to control the position of the parallel sheets during their transport through a hold module of the inserting system.

主权项

1. An inserting system configured to adjust alignment of a plurality of sheets of paper outputted from a cutter module, the inserting system comprising:
a hold module positioned downstream from the cutter module, the hold module including: a plurality of parallel sheet transports for transporting the sheets of paper in parallel; a plurality of servo motors configured to drive each sheet transport and each servo motor coupled to an encoder configured to generate encoder pulses for each rotation of the servo motors; first and second photo sensors configured to detect a presence of first and second sheets at respective sheet transport entry points; and an inserter system control computer programmed to calculate an alignment adjustment of the sheets in the hold module to account for requirements of one or more modules downstream of the hold module, the system control computer configured to:
calculate an initial alignment offset between the sheets based on a difference in encoder pulses received between a first detection of the first sheet by the first photo sensor on a first sheet transport and a detection of the second sheet by the second photo sensor on a second sheet transport,receive established sheet alignment requirements of the one or more modules downstream of the hold module,calculate an alignment correction distance, andcontrol a distance that each sheet in the hold module is to be moved for each cyclic update.