An Overview of Digital Printing Systems - Control of Color Imaging Systems: Analysis and Design - page 8

Feeder Marker Finisher

Image fully
constructed on rigid
belt

• 85 computers
• 5 M lines of software
• 3.5 miles of wires
• 192 sensors
• 102 motors

600 × 4800 pixels/in.
Closed loop process controls
Automatic adjusting
decurler

Shuttle vacuum feeder

Standard
DFA

Six servos
steer paper
to image

Gripper less
paper
handling

Creo
Spire
DocuSP

Wide radius
turners

Straight paper
path

Standard
DFA

FIGURE 1.4 Physical layout of the iGen3 print engine (IOI architecture). (FromMestha, L.K.
et al., Control elements in production printing and publishing systems: DocuColor iGen3, 42nd
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Vol. 4, pp. 4096 - 4108, Dec. 9 - 11, 2003. With
permission.)

Multiple laser imager

Paper
path

Fuser

Black
station

Magenta
station

Cyan
station

Yellow
station

FIGURE 1.5 Physical layout of the DC8000 print engine (tandem architecture).

1.4.2 P ARALLEL P RINTING S YSTEMS
The tightly integrated parallel digital printer (TIPP) architecture developed by Xerox
is designed to deliver the power of two or more printers with the simplicity of one.
The TIPP architecture includes the software and hardware that enables multiple print
engines to work together seamlessly as one printing device. This architecture also
makes the printer smart enough, depending upon the circumstances, to allow each
individual engine to work independently of the other.
A side view of a parallel printing system is shown in the schematic of Figure 1.6,
which includes two printers stacked vertically, a media transporting system, and a
network of flexible paper paths, which delivers media to and from each of the

printers. At any time, both printers can be simultaneously printing so that they