JPH09294185A - Copying system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To allow a plurality of printers to print out data even when one scanner connects to a plurality of the printers even when a read/write speed of the scanner differs from that of the printers. SOLUTION: The copying machine is made up of a scanner section 200 reading an original, a printer section 400 printing out image data read by the scanner section 200, and a system control section 300 controlling systematically the scanner section 200 and the printer section 400. In this case, the system control section 300 controls the scanner section 200 so that a read speed of the scanner section 200 in the sub scanning direction is in matching with a sub scanning speed of the printer section 400 in the case of executing a copy function.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a copying system in which a scanner section and a printer section are independently provided.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A scanner for reading a document and a printer for reading image data by the scanner and printing image data,
Conventionally, various copying apparatuses having a system control unit that systematically controls the scanner and the printer have been provided. Such a conventional copying apparatus, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 7
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 107218, the reading speed of the scanner unit at the time of the copy function is matched with the writing speed of the printer, and the image data read by the scanner can be used as it is in the printer unit.
Therefore, between the scanner and the printer having different reading speeds and writing speeds, even if one scanner is connected to the other printer, printing cannot be performed.

[0003]

As a technique for compensating for such a speed difference, a system controller is provided with a large-capacity image memory as shown in the above-mentioned publication, and image data read by a scanner is once stored in the image memory. Remember
It is possible to read the image data from the image memory again and output it to the printer to absorb the speed difference, but it is necessary to install a large amount of memory, which causes a significant increase in cost and an increase in the size of the device. There are drawbacks.

The present invention has been made in view of the circumstances of the prior art as described above, and an object thereof is to connect a plurality of printers with one scanner even if the scanner and the printer have different reading and writing speeds. An object is to provide a copying system capable of performing a printing operation.

[0005]

To achieve the above object, a first means is a scanner unit for reading a document, a printer unit for printing image data, and a system control unit having an image memory for storing image data. In the digital copying system including the image memory for transferring the image data from the scanner unit to the printer unit, the system control unit, when executing the copy function, the sub-scanning speed of the scanner unit to the sub-scanning speed of the printer unit. The feature is that the reading speed in the direction is controlled so as to match.

To achieve the above object, the second means includes a sub-scanning speed notifying means for notifying the system control section of the sub-scanning speed by the printer section in the first means, and the scanner section is provided with the sub-scanning speed. The sub-scanning speed setting means for setting the reading speed is set by the sub-scanning speed setting means based on the sub-scanning speed notified from the sub-scanning speed notification means when the copy function is performed. It is characterized by doing.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the third means is that the scanner section in the first means adjusts the speed of the traveling body of the scanner section and line thinning for thinning image data at arbitrary line intervals. And means are provided.

[0008]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram showing an overall configuration of an image reading apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, the image reading apparatus 1 is basically composed of a document feeding section 100 and a scanner section 200 which is a document reading section.

The document transport section 100 includes a document tray 101 on which documents are placed, a pickup roller 102 for picking up documents one by one, and a pickup roller 102.
A pair of registration rollers 103 that conveys the original picked up by the timing roller, a conveyance drum 104 that conveys the original sent from the registration roller pair 103 to the original reading position A, and an original is sandwiched between the conveyance drum 104. Conveying roller 105 that conveys a sheet, reading position A
It is composed of a pair of discharge rollers 107 and 108 for discharging the document read in step S1 to the discharge tray 106 side, a conveying drum 104, a conveying roller 105, and a conveying motor 109 for driving the pair of discharging rollers 107 and 108. .

The scanner section 200 includes a document table glass 202 provided on an upper part of a casing 201, and the document table glass 20.
2. An illumination lamp 203 for illuminating an original placed on the document 2 or an original conveyed to the original reading position A, a first mirror 204 for receiving reflected light from the original illuminated by the illumination lamp 203, and a first mirror 204 for receiving the reflected light. The second mirror 205, which receives the reflected light from the mirror 204, and the second mirror 20.
A third mirror 206 that receives the reflected light from the fifth mirror, a condenser lens 207 that collects the reflected light from the third mirror 206,
It is composed of a CCD 208 which is irradiated with the light condensed by the condensing lens 207 and photoelectrically converts it. The illumination lamp 203 and the first mirror 204 are provided on the first traveling body, and the second traveling body
The mirror 205 and the third mirror 206 are respectively mounted on the second traveling body and driven by the traveling body motor 209.
Further, various control boards described below are arranged on the bottom of the scanner unit 200.

In the image reading apparatus thus constructed,
A document placed on the platen glass 201 has a certification lamp 2
03, and the reflected light is reflected by the first mirror 20.
4, the second mirror 205 and the third mirror 206 perform scanning, and the condenser lens 207 condenses the CCD2.
It is incident on 08 and photoelectrically converted. On the other hand, the document tray 10
The original placed on the sheet 1 is separated by the pick-up roller 102, and the feeding drum 1 measures the timing of feeding while sandwiched by the nip of the registration roller pair 103.
No. 04 side, the conveying drum 104 and the conveying roller 1
The sheet is sandwiched by 05 and sent to the reading position A, and further discharged to the sheet discharge tray 106 through the pair of sheet discharge rollers 107 and 108. Then, scanning is performed by the first mirror 204, the second mirror 205, and the third mirror 206 that are fixed at the reading position A, and the light is condensed by the condenser lens 207.
It is photoelectrically converted and read at D208.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a signal processing system for performing the signal processing of the above-mentioned document reading apparatus. In the figure,
The signal system of the document reading device uses an MBU (Mo
therBoard Unit) 11, an ADU (Adf Driving Unit) 12 that controls the drive of the document feeder 100, and an RCU (Reverce Side Control) that controls the back side reading of the document.
Unit) 13 and the SCU that controls the scanner unit 200
(Scaner Control Unit) 14, DCU (Data Compression Unit) 15 for compressing the read image data, and DCU (Data Comunication Uni) for compressing predetermined image data.
t) 15, IEU (Image Enhanc) that performs predetermined image processing
e Unit) 16 and a PS that functions as a power supply device for each unit
It is basically composed of a U (Power Supply Unit) 17. The CCD 208 described above is an SBU (Sensor B
Oard Unit) 18 is mounted.

In the signal processing system constructed as described above, the reflected light of the original incident on the CCD 208 on the SBU 18 is converted in the CCD 208 into an analog signal having a voltage value according to the intensity of the light. The converted analog image signal is divided into odd bits and even bits and output.
This analog image signal is AHP (Anal
The dark potential part is removed by the ogue Data Handling Peripheral (19), the odd bit and the even bit are combined and the gain is adjusted to a predetermined amplitude, and then the A / D converter 20
Is input to and converted into a digital signal.

The digitized image signal is subjected to shading correction, gamma correction, MTF correction, etc. by a SIP (Scanner Imaging Peripheral) 21 on the SCU 14 and then binarized to obtain a page synchronization signal, a line synchronization signal,
It is output as a video signal together with the image clock. The video signal output from the SIP 21 is output from the connector 2
It is output to IEU 16 via 2. The video signal input to the IEU 16 is subjected to predetermined image processing in the IEU 16, and then input to the SCU 14 again. SCU again
The video signal input to 14 is input to the selector 23. The other input of the selector 23 is the video signal from the RCU 13, and the reading surface of the original can be selected by this. RCU13 is a CPU (Ce
ntral Processing Unit) 24, the read back side image data is transferred to the SCU 14 via the MBU 11 as a video signal. Selector 2
The video signal from 5 is connected to the selector 26 and the connector 27. The other input of the selector 26 is the video signal from the video adapter 28. With this configuration, the video adapter 28 can be connected via the connector 27.

The video signal output from the SIP 21 via the above-mentioned path is a DRAM (Dynamic Random Acc
SBC (Scan Buffer Cont) that manages ess memory (29)
roller) 30 and SIMM (Single Inline Memo)
ry Module) 31 and is stored in the image memory composed of the DRAM 29. The image data stored in the image memory can be read and written by the CPU 24 via the SBC 30. The image data stored in the image memory is connected to the selector 32 and the connector 33, further connected to the DCU 15 via the connector 33, and the DCU 15 compresses the image data. In addition,
The image data compressed by the DCU 15 becomes the other input of the selector 32, and the selector 32 can select whether to compress the image data. Then, the image data output selected by the selector 32 is sent to the host computer via the SCSI controller 34. Further, on the SCU 14, a CPU 24, an EPROM (Erasable Programmable R
ead Only Memory) 35 and RAM (Randam AccessMem)
ory) 36 is installed, SCSI controller 3
4 is controlled to communicate with the host computer.
The SCSI controller 34 controls the scanner unit 200 via the CPU bus 81. The CPU 24 also performs timing control of the drive timing of the traveling body motor 209 including a stepping motor, the sheet feeding motor, and the conveyance motor 109, and arbitrarily sets the sub-scanning reading speed. ADU
Reference numeral 12 has a function of relaying the power supply of the electrical components used in the document conveying section 100.

The video adapter 28 is connected to the CPU bus 81 of the SCU 14 by the connector 27,
C to the video adapter 28 by the address and data sent by the SEND command of the SI controller 34
Data is written via the PU bus 81. Similarly, the data at the address sent by the SEND command of the SCSI controller 34 is transferred to the external device by the READ command of the SCSI controller 34. In this way, it becomes possible to write arbitrary data to the video adapter 28 and read data at an arbitrary address. A system controller 300 described later is connected to the connector 91 of the video adapter 28.

The digitized image data is input to the SIP 21 line by line. In this case, the line cycle of the input image data is constant regardless of the reading density (reading speed). The SIP 21 is equipped with a line thinning circuit that thins image data line by line.
Image data is thinned line by line according to the thinning pattern set by the PU 24. Therefore, the SIP 21 is provided with a thinning pattern setting register, and the CPU 24
Lines are thinned according to the value set by, for example, as follows.

That is, the set value of the thinning pattern setting register is expressed in binary. 1010 1010 → thinning every other line 1110 1110 → thinning once every 4 lines The combination of the thinning pattern and the sub-scanning reading speed is set in advance in an external device. It is determined by the combination of the reading speed and the image data transfer speed set from

Below, the transfer paper transport speed is 101.6 mm.
/ Sec digital copying machine A and transfer paper conveyance speed is 5
Description will be made on the assumption that there are two digital copying apparatuses of the 0.8 mm / sec digital copying apparatus B. Further, the speed at which the original is read by the CCD 208 of the scanner unit 200 is 1 Mbit / sec (8 Mdot / se).
In c), the line cycle is 625 μsec (5000 dots).
/ Line). (Basic read density is 400 dpi)
And In this case, if data transfer is performed at 400 dpi without thinning lines, the time for transferring data for 400 lines is 400 × 0.000625 (0.25 se).
c), so 1600 lines per second (101.6m
m) data will be created and 101.6 mm /
It suffices to drive the traveling body motor 209 so that the traveling body moves in sec.

Therefore, in the digital copying apparatus A, when the copying function is carried out at 400 dpi, the scanner section 200 only needs to read at 101.6 mm / sec, so that data is output without thinning lines. On the other hand, in the digital copying apparatus B, the data overflows on the printer side if the line thinning is not performed.
The line thinning is performed once for every two lines at 0.8 mm / sec. In summary, in the digital copying apparatus A, the thinning pattern is "11111111" and the moving speed of the traveling body is 101.6 mm / sec, and the thinning pattern of the digital copying apparatus B is "10101010".
Thus, the traveling speed of the traveling body is 50.8 mm / sec.

FIG. 5 shows a timing chart of the digital copying apparatus A, and FIG. 6 shows a timing chart of the digital copying apparatus B. (A) in each of these figures
Is the line sync signal of the printer unit, (b) is the image data of the printer unit, (c) is the sync signal of the CCD line, (d) is the line sync signal of the scanner unit, and (e) is the scanner unit. The image data of each is shown. The line synchronizing signals of the digital copying apparatus A shown in FIG. 5 are the same, but in the digital copying apparatus B of FIG. 6, the CCD line synchronizing signal has a doubled frequency.
The writing speed of the printer is adjusted by thinning out once every two lines.

As another method of changing the reading speed, a method of switching the reading speed of the original by the CCD 208 of the scanner section 200 without thinning can be considered.
In this case, the CCD 208 in the digital copying machine A
The reading speed of the original by 1 Mbites / sec (8
(Mdot / sec), and the traveling speed of the running body is 101.6 mm / sec, as in the above. On the other hand, the reading speed of the original document by the CCD 208 in the digital copying apparatus B is 0.5 Mbites / sec (4 Mdot / se).
c), and the traveling speed of the running body is 50.8 as above.
It may be set to mm / sec. Since this method switches a plurality of clocks that are known in advance, the corresponding read speed cannot be arbitrarily set, and the higher the corresponding read speed, the more complicated the configuration becomes, which is disadvantageous in terms of cost.

The scanner section 200 and the printer section 400 for printing the image data from the scanner section 200 are
As shown in FIG. 3, it is controlled by the system control unit 300 based on an instruction from the operation unit 500. FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the system control unit. The system control unit 300 is arranged on the printer unit 400 side, and the operation unit 500
In accordance with the copy start instruction from, the scanner unit 200 is instructed to start reading, and the printer unit 400 is instructed to start writing. The system control unit 300 includes a memory unit 301 and a CPU 302, and the scanner unit 2
From 00, an image data signal 303 and a line synchronization signal 304 are input to the memory unit 301. Memory unit 301
Has a minimum memory capacity required for line synchronization between the scanner unit 200 and the printer unit 400. The memory unit 301 outputs the image data signal 305 to the printer unit 400, and the line synchronization signal 306 is input from the printer unit 400. CP of system control unit 300
The U 302 is connected to the scanner unit 200 and the printer unit 400 by serial communication 307, and by executing a predetermined command, it is possible to issue a reading start instruction to the scanner unit 200 and a writing start instruction to the printer unit 400. ing. The printer unit 400 is also provided with a sub-scanning speed notification unit (not shown) that notifies the CPU 302 of the sub-scanning speed via the serial communication 307.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart for explaining the operation of the system control section. The operation of the system controller 300 will be described with reference to this flowchart. First, power is turned on (step 600). As a result, the system control unit 300 reads the writing speed value from the printer unit (step 601), and sets the reading speed matching the speed value in the scanner unit 200 (step 602). Operation unit 5
If there is a copy start instruction from 00 (step 603),
The scanner unit is instructed to start reading (step 60).
At the same time, an instruction to start writing to the printer unit 400 is issued (step 605).

[0026]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the reading speed in the sub-scanning direction of the scanner section is matched with the sub-scanning speed of the printer section. Without the image memory of
The copy function can be realized by transferring the read data from the scanner unit to the printer unit. Therefore, one scanner unit can be connected to a plurality of printer units to execute a printing operation.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the system control unit is adapted to adjust the reading speed by the sub-scanning speed notifying means of the printer unit and the sub-scanning speed setting unit of the scanner unit. The unit can be connected to a plurality of printer units having different printing speeds for printing.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, since the means for adjusting the speed of the traveling body of the scanner section and the line thinning means for thinning out the image data at an arbitrary line interval are provided, the CCD drive clock. Since the reading speed of the scanner unit can be changed without biasing the frequency, it is possible to set an arbitrary reading speed, and it is possible to construct a system that is simple in structure and inexpensive.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram showing an overall configuration of a scanner according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an electrical configuration of a document reading device according to an embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an electrical configuration of a system control unit according to the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the system control unit.

5 is a timing chart in the digital copying apparatus A. FIG.

6 is a timing chart in the digital copying apparatus B. FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Image Reading Device 11 MBU (Mother Board Unit) 12 ADU (Adf Driving Unit) 13 RCU (Reverce Side Control Unit) 14 SCU (Scaner Control Unit) 15 DCU (Data Compression Unit) 16 IEU (Image Enhance Unit) 17 PSU ( Power Supply Unit) 18 SBU (Sensor Board Unit) 19 AHP (Analogue Data Handling Peripheral) 20 A / D converter 21 SIP (Scanner Imaging Peripheral) 24 CPU (Central Processing Unit) 28 Video adapter 29 DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) 30 SBC (Scan Buffer Controller) 31 SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module) 32 Selector 34 SCSI Controller 35 EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only M
emory) 36 RAM (Randam Access Memory) 100 Document transport unit 200 Scanner unit 208 CCD 209 Traveling motor 300 System control unit 301 Memory unit 302 CPU 400 Printer unit 500 Operation unit

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A scanner unit for reading a document, a printer unit for printing image data, and a system control unit having an image memory for storing image data,
In a copying system in which image data is transferred from a scanner unit to a printer unit via the image memory, the system control unit, when performing a copy function, has a sub-scanning speed of the printer unit and a reading speed in the sub-scanning direction of the scanner unit. A copying system characterized by controlling to match. 2. The printer unit includes a sub-scanning speed notification unit that notifies the system control unit of the sub-scanning speed, and the scanner unit includes a sub-scanning speed setting unit that sets the sub-scanning speed. 2. The copying system according to claim 1, wherein the copy unit adjusts the reading speed with the sub-scanning speed setting unit based on the sub-scanning speed notified by the sub-scanning speed notification unit when the copy function is executed. 3. The scanner unit comprises an adjusting unit for adjusting the speed of a traveling body of the scanner unit, and a line thinning unit for thinning out image data at an arbitrary line interval. 1. The copying system described in 1.