Importance

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Abstract

In recirculatively precollatively copying a set of plural original documents onto both sides of copy sheets to produce a desired plural number precollated duplex copy sheet sets, by normally copying the documents only once in each copying circulation of the document set onto one side of copy sheets to form a duplexing buffer and copying other documents onto the opposite sides of the buffer copies to form duplex precollated copies, the improvement comprising: counting the number of documents in the document set and determining that the number of documents is only two or three, and in response to the determination, automatically switching the mode of copying of the documents to a higher productivity two or three document set mode in which plural identical consecutive copies are first made from only one document (the first document page) by halting the first copying circulation of the document set to copy only the one document, and forming the buffer from these plural identical copies and then skipping the copying of the same one document in the subsequent production of a number of copy sheet sets corresponding to the number of the plural identical copies. If the determined number of documents is two, the number of plural identical copies made is equal to the number of copy sets made, but not more than 14, and the document set is circulated not more than three times for up to 14 copy sets. If the determined number of documents is three, the plural number of identical plural copies made is four, and all documents other than the first document copies are copied only once in each document set circulation.

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First Claim