Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Francisco Javier Rodriguez

David Claramunt

Antonio Monclus

Francisco Guerrero

Ezequiel Jordi Rufes

Cristina Sabater

Francesc Subirada

Carles Flotats

Jose M Rio Doval

Rodrigo Ruiz

Pau Soler

Roger Vinas

In some examples, a first heating stage heats a print medium to a first temperature in a printing region when printing latex ink on the print medium, and a curing heating stage heats, in a curing zone, the print medium to a curing temperature greater than the first temperature to cure the latex ink on the print medium. A cooling stage located between the first and curing heating stages cools the print medium by directing a first part of airflow from the cooling stage to a printing zone, the cooling performed after the print medium has been heated by the first heating stage and prior to heating of the print medium by the curing heating stage. A second part of the airflow is directed from the cooling stage to the curing zone.

Printing onto a print medium

A controller controls a first heating stage to heat a printing medium to a first temperature in a printing region when printing latex ink on the printing medium, and controls a second heating stage to heat the printing medium to a second temperature greater than the first temperature in a curing region to cure the latex ink on the medium. The controller controls a cooling stage located between the first and second heating stages to cool the printing medium after the printing medium has been heated by the first heating stage and prior to heating of the printing medium by the second heating stage.

Printing device and control method

A printing device and method for printing a latex ink on a printing medium is disclosed. The printing device comprises a heating stage for heating the medium at least during printing the latex ink on said medium, a further heating stage for curing the latex ink on the medium and a controller arrangement for individually controlling the heating stage and the further heating stage, whereby the controller arrangement is arranged to reduce the heat output of the heating stage during a non-printing mode of the printing device and to reduce the heat output of the further heating stage during a non-curing mode of the printing device.

A sensor system for detecting skew in print media along the feed path of a hardcopy device is disclosed. In one embodiment of the invention the system is arranged to generate a first image of a portion of print media at a first position along the feed path and to generate a second image of the portion of print media at a second position along the feed path, the system is arranged to compare the first and second images and thereby detect a change in the angle of skew of the media between the first and second positions.

Media-position media sensor

To compensate for color-calibration sensor drift, a measurement of bare-print-medium tonal value is taken in immediate time juxtaposition to each color test pattern; measured bare-medium tone is then used to correct color-patch readings. A line sensor or the like, on the scanning printhead carriage, is used for the reading. Preferably two such readings are taken, one at each end of each test pattern; ideally separate scans of the bare medium are taken without any test-pattern patch to develop longterm and short-term drift profiles, for refining the corrections. To compensate for calibration error due to runout in the carriage track&#x2014;particularly for wide-bed printers&#x2014;sensor response to bare medium is used to represent variations in carriage-to-medium spacing along the track; these variations are corrected in later sensor use.

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Mataro, Spain

Francisco Javier Rodriguez