Fuji Photo Film Company, Limited

Fujifilm Corporation

Hideyuki Koguchi

Takao Nakayama

Seiichi Inoue

Koji Kamiyama

Eiichi Kato

Kazuo Ishii

Yusuke Nakazawa

Ryoichi Yamamoto

Yoshiharu Sasaki

The ink jet recording method performs ink jet recording of an image on a recording medium using an ink jet head. The method allows an electrostatic force to act on ink prepared by dispersing charged particles containing colorants in a dispersion medium to form a thread of said ink, divides the thread into ink droplets of the ink to eject the ink droplets toward the recording medium and allows the ink droplets to be landed onto the recording medium moving relatively to the ink jet head to form an image dot on the recording medium. When a speed at which the recording medium and an ejection portion of the ink jet head for ejecting the ink droplets move relatively is referred to as 'v', a division frequency of the thread is referred to as 'f', and a diameter of the thread is referred to as &#x201c;d&#x201d;, the following expression is satisfied:()&#x3c;()where &#x201c;a&#x201d; is a coefficient.

Ink jet recording method

The ink jet recording method allows an electrostatic force to act on an ink composition containing at least charged particles containing a colorant and a dispersion medium to form a thread of the ink composition, and divides the thread into small portions to eject ink droplets on a recording medium. A first average concentration of the charged particles contained in the thread from its tip end portion to its central portion is higher than a second average concentration of the charged particles contained in a whole thread. And/or, a first force acting on the charged particles contained in the thread is made larger than a second force obtained by subtracting the first force acting on the charged particles contained in the thread from a second force acting on a whole thread.

An electrostatic ink jet head has a head substrate, an insulating substrate having at least one through hole, an ink guide, ink supply means, a control electrode, and meniscus control means. An ink passage is formed between the head substrate and the insulating substrate. The meniscus control means controls fixing of an edge portion of an ink meniscus formed in proximity to the through hole or within the through hole. With the meniscus control means, it becomes possible to maintain the position and shape of the ink meniscus with stability, thereby allowing ejection and flying of liquid droplets, such as ink droplets, with stability and formation of an image of high quality on a liquid droplets reception member such as a recording medium.

Electrostatic ink jet head fixing a position of an edge portion of a meniscus of ink

In a printer, in order to compensate for non-uniformity of one of or both of film thickness of each pixel by an ink applying characteristic of the printer and fluctuations over time of a surface area, as well as to compensate for positional non-uniformity, new image data is generated from original image data and from the ink applying characteristic of the printer. Even if ink is supplied in a constant amount, an image is formed without non-uniform density. The printer has a simple structure in which a single dam plate (ink key) is provided along an axial direction of an ink moving roller. In ink supply control, a degree of opening of the dam plate is always a constant degree of opening, and an amount of ink supplied per unit time is a constant amount.

Printing method and printing device

An inkjet recording method uses a line-array inkjet head, sets different ink ejection frequencies for respective ink ejection holes desposed in array and ejects ink onto a plate-shaped recording medium at the different ink ejection frequencies from the ink ejection holes to perform recording.

Inkjet recording method

The multi-channel recording head includes a plurality of recording channels arranged in one direction, and spare channels arranged away from the recording channels by an integral multiple of the channel pitch of the recording channels on the extension of an array of the recording channels. The spare channels are arranged as least as many as the number of the recording channels, and each spare channel has the same physical resolution as the resolution of an image to be recorded. The physical resolution of the multi-channel recording head is lower than the resolution of the image. The image recording method and the image recording apparatus record the image by using the above multi-channel recording head.

Multi-channel recording head, image recording method and image recording apparatus

Computer-to-cylinder type lithographic printing method and computer-to-cylinder type lithographic printing apparatus

A light scanning apparatus includes a deflector for deflecting a light beam emitted from a laser. A rotating reflector is provided in the deflector, and a reflecting surface is formed on the rotating reflector by cutting away a portion of the rotating reflector diagonally with respect to a plane perpendicular to the axis thereof. The light scanning apparatus further includes a control device for controlling a stopping position of the rotating reflector such that the rotating reflector stops rotating in a state in which the reflecting surface faces a predetermined direction. A magnet, an electromagnet, or a gear mechanism may be used as the control device.

Light scanning apparatus

A heating apparatus which forms an image by heating a sheet-form material carrying image data. The heating apparatus comprises a heater, which is disposed at an axial center portion of the sheet-form material, for directly heating the sheet-form material to a temperature suitable for heat developing processing, and rings or a cylinder for rotating and allowing the sheet-form material to be exposed to the heater. The sheet-form material can be rotated on either an inner or outer surface of the rings or an inner surface of the cylinder. In addition, a plurality of rings can be used which correspond to differing widths of sheet-form material.

Heating apparatus

A plate material the surface of which is formed of film including as its major component a material whose surface changes from a lipophilic state to a hydrophilic state by a photocatalytic reaction and returns to a lipophilic state when subsequently subjected to a heat treatment is used for making a printing plate. The substantially entire surface of the plate material is uniformly exposed to active light and an image is written in a heat mode on the surface of the plate material, which has been exposed to the active light.

Plate making device and printer and printing system using the plate

A plate material the surface of which is formed of film including as its major component a material whose surface changes from a lipophilic state to a hydrophilic state by a photocatalytic reaction and returns to a lipophilic state when subsequently subjected to a heat treatment is used for making a printing plate. The plate material is exposed to active light over the substantially entire surface thereof with image-wise part kept unexposed. The part exposed to the active light becomes hydrophilic and repels ink while the part unexposed to the active light is kept lipophilic and receives ink. When the plate material is subsequently heated, the hydrophilic part is rendered lipophilic and the plate material can be reused.

The improved apparatus for exposing a light-sensitive material to recording light modulated in accordance with an image to be recorded includes a source of recording light, a multi-channel spatial light modulating element using a liquid crystal, imaging optics with which the recording light modulated with the spatial light modulating element is imaged on the light-sensitive material, and apparatus for adjusting the temperature of the spatial light modulating element. This exposing apparatus ensures that image of high quality (high resolution) can be recorded at high speed by performing multi-channel exposure with an inexpensive and simple device design.

Exposing apparatus

A donor sheet having at least a thin image-forming film on a support is brought into a superposed relationship with an image-receiving material having an image-receiving layer provided on a support either directly or with at least one cushion layer interposed in such a way that the thin film faces the image-receiving layer, and thermal energy is applied imagewise onto the donor sheet, which is then peeled from the image-receiving material to form an image on the latter. Donor sheets having a plurality of peelable thin films are combined selectively with different image-forming materials to insure that at least operations selected from among color image formation, mask image formation, platemaking and filter preparation are possible.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Hideyuki Koguchi