Sheet or signature feeding machine and method

Claim 1

A machine for producing signatures and forming books therefrom comprising: a signature gathering conveyor, a roll stand having spaced spindles for supplying rolled webs of paginated printed material, means to withdraw web lengths from the rolls and means to register the withdrawn web lengths for proper pagination in justaposed head-to-foot relation, a knife and means to advance the registered webs to the knife along a first predetermined linear path where the webs are severed at a predetermined interval to produce a product of juxtaposed sheets, a first folder spaced laterally from said predetermined path for folding said product into a signature form of given dimension, transfer means including a transfer conveyor to transfer said product to the first folder, said transfer conveyor having a linear path diverging from said predetermined path, means to transfer the signature from the first folder to the gathering conveyor, a linear second transfer conveyor coaxial with said predetermined path and leading to a second folder for folding a signature to a different dimension, means to divert the juxtaposed sheet product emerging from said knife either to said first transfer conveyor or to said second transfer conveyor for delivery either to the first folder or to the second folder where the sheet product is folded into signature form, and signature delivery means to deliver the signature from the second folder to the gathering conveyor.