Documents are advanced to a registered position along the trailing edge of the exposure platen of an electrophotographic copier by a flat belt supported adjacent to the registration edge by a pulley formed with axially spaced indentations to produce corresponding corrugations in the belt. A registration gate having a blocking position in which transversely spaced fingers extend into the belt corrugations arrest the documents at the registration edge while the normal-diameter portions of the belt pulley press the document downwardly to prevent it from riding over the registration gate. Position pulses from an encoding wheel are counted to determine the position of the document, and drive motor is slowed to one-fifth its normal speed when the document advances within a predetermined distance of the registration edge. After the platen belt is stopped for copying of a first original, a second original is advanced from a stack into a nip formed by the belt and a preregistration roller adjacent the entrance end of the platen. Upon actuation of the belt to feed the preregistered sheet to the platen, the feed elements for advancing the sheets from the stack are momentarily reactuated to ensure separation of the sheet supplied to the preregistration nip from the remaining sheets in the stack. A relatively long prefeed time is allowed for advancing the first original to the preregistration nip to prevent the erroneous declaration of a fault while an initially loaded stack is becoming entrained in the stack feeding elements.

A paper tray having a bottom, front and rear walls extending upwardly from the bottom, and side walls extending upwardly from the bottom to define an open boxlike structure for storage of sheets of paper in readiness for use. A paper receiver is pivotably mounted on the tray for receiving sheets of paper after printing thereof. The paper receiver has a first position in which paper can be fed automatically from the tray to a print roller and a second position in which paper can be manually fed to the print roller. In the automatic mode, the paper is fed by a drive roller to produce a buckle at its leading position to insure alignment at the print roller and subsequent straight, unskewed feed. The paper receiver carries a conveyor belt driven from the print roller at a greater linear speed to insure positive feed of the paper from the print roller to a receiving station.

An intermediate document storage chamber permitting coupling of two asynchronously operated document input and output devices together, the storage chamber having flexible guide members for bowing or arcing the portion of the document in the chamber, and control responsive to the level of the document portion in the chamber to control operation of the document input device to assure a continuous supply of document material to the document output device.

A loop is formed between upstream and downstream pairs of rollers by driving the downstream pair slower than the upstream pair and/or by a direction changing guide. The downstream pair of rollers is axially movable to bring an in-track edge of a sheet to a predetermined sensed position to cross-track register the sheet. The loop permits cross-track movement of the sheet despite engagement of the sheet with the upstream pair of rollers.

An apparatus for producing items in selected configurations and a system and method for controlling the same. More particularly, an apparatus for producing mail pieces and a system and method for controlling it to produce mail pieces in a variety of configurations are disclosed. The apparatus includes a laser printer and folding sealing apparatus controlled by a data processor. The folder sealer apparatus combines sheets printed by the laser printer with pre-printed sheets and envelope forms, which also may be printed by the laser printer or may be windowed envelopes, folds the sheets as necessary and folds and seals the envelope form about the folded sheets to produce a mail piece. A user inputs a configuration for the mail piece which is translated by the data processor into a data structure and transmitted to the controller of the folder sealer apparatus. The controller controls devices comprised in the laser printer and the folder sealer by executing state routines in accordance with the data structure to produce the mail piece in the defined configuration. Concurrently the data processor transmits text from an output file to the laser printer for printing on printed sheets and envelope forms. The data processor also controls the laser printer to print an address for the mail piece either on an envelope form or on a printed sheet in a position where it will be visible through the envelope. Thus the apparatus is controlled to process an output file stored in the data processor into a mail run having a selected configuration. A mechanism and method for accumulating and folding sheets is also disclosed.