Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Colin Reims

Marquis G Waller

Kenneth Stuart Shouldice

John Barker Condon

Kelly Harr

Systems and methods are provided for ink estimation. One embodiment is a system for dynamic ink use estimation. The system includes a cloud computing system. The cloud computing system includes a cloud event service able to receive a print job and potential configurations of a printer selected for printing the print job, and to initialize virtual printers for the printer that each correspond with one of the potential configurations. The cloud computing system also includes the virtual printers, which are able to operate in parallel to estimate amounts of ink used for each configuration during printing of the print job, and to store the estimated amounts of ink in a cloud storage.

Cloud-based parallel ink estimation for production printers

Systems and methods are provided for ink estimation. One embodiment is a system for dynamically revising ink estimation models. The system includes a memory storing a virtual machine for instantiating virtual printers that estimate amounts of ink used by a printer for print jobs, and a controller able, for each print job, to: identify estimated amounts of ink determined by the virtual printers according to each of multiple configurations for the printer, and identify a chosen configuration and a corresponding actual amount of ink used by the printer. The controller selects a configuration, determines that estimated amounts of ink for the selected configuration have less than a threshold difference from actual amounts of ink for each of multiple print jobs, and updates an ink estimation model at the virtual machine based on the estimated amounts of ink and corresponding print job data for the selected configuration.

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Boulder, CO, United States of America

Colin Reims