Jet drop copying apparatus

Claim 1

Jet drop printing apparatus for copying or duplicating comprising: Rotary support means for supporting a print receiving sheet, Paper handling means for feeding said sheet to the rotary support means and removing the sheet therefrom, Rotary drive means for causing rotary motion of the rotary support means, A print head including an orifice plate provided with a series of orifices defining an array of jet printing nozzles for generating an array of parallel jets to print a series of non-contiguous tracks of image information on a sheet mounted as aforesaid on the rotary support means and rotated therewith, Advancing means for advancing said array of jets in a direction parallel to the axis of said rotary motion and at a speed for interlacing said tracks to produce a solid coverage print, Flat bed document support means for supporting a document to be copied, Illuminating means for illuminating said document, Collimating means for collimating light reflected by said document, A rotating mirror assembly for variable angular deflection of said collimated light in correspondence with the rotation of the rotary support means, A focusing lens for focusing said collimated and angularly deflected light to create an image of at least a part of said document, An array of photosensing elements arranged in like manner as said jet printing nozzles and positioned at the image plane of the focusing lens, Transport means for transporting said photosensing elements, said focusing lens, said mirror assembly, and said collimating means in a direction parallel to the axis of rotation of the mirror assembly and in synchronism with aforesaid axial advancing of said nozzle array, Print control means responsive to the photosensing elements for controlling the operation of said nozzles, and Means for initiating removal of the print receiving sheet from the rotary support means by the paper handling means.