Seiko Epson Corporation

Hiroaki Tojo

Atsushi Kobayashi

Hitotoshi Kimura

Toshio Kumagai

Minoru Usui

Hironori Endo

Hiroyuki Onishi

Toshihisa Saruta

Yoshiharu Aruga

Noboru Tamura

Kazunaga Suzuki

Akira Takagi

Akio Owatari

Masaaki Itano

Takashi Mano

Junichi Iida

Shoichi Hiraide

Jinichi Takizawa

A printing apparatus of the present invention includes a print head having a plurality of nozzles, from which ink droplets are ejected, a light detection unit that has a light emitting element and a light receiving element and determines the active or inactive state of the nozzles based on whether or not the light beam is intercepted by ink droplets, and a carriage that moves the print head relative to the light detection unit. The light beam emitted from the light emitting element has an optical axis that is inclined at a predetermined angle to a nozzle array. At least part of the plurality of nozzles are inspected while the print head is moving relative to the light detection unit at a fixed speed.

Inkjet recording apparatus

An ink jet printer that produces a multi-value output of a multi-tone image. The printer includes a main scan driving unit that drives print head with two nozzle arrays in a main scanning direction relative to a printing medium. Each nozzle array has a preset number of nozzles arranged in a fixed nozzle interval. A sub-scan driving unit drives the printing medium in a sub-scanning direction. A driving unit controller controls the main scan driving unit and the sub-scan driving unit to locate the print head at the determined positions. The print head driving unit supplies electric power for the print head based on print image data which includes multi-value tone information which is stored in the data storage unit. The binary output is based on the jetting or nonjetting of ink and the positional control by the driving unit controller causes the print head driving unit to superpose dots on the dots that have already been formed so as to carry out multi-value outputs.

Ink jet printer

An ink jet recording method which can simply realize a plurality of resolutions in a single printer without varying the amount of ink per droplet is disclosed. An ink jet recording method comprises the steps of: selecting a recording medium; changing an image resolution depending on the selected recording medium; and ejecting ink droplets onto the recording medium to form ink dots thereon, wherein the amount of ink of the droplet is constant when the resolution is changed, and wherein the image resolution is changed so that ink penetrability or ink repellency of the recording medium makes the diameters of the ink dots on the recording medium fall in the range of from 100 to 160% of diagonal dot pitch of the resolution.

Ink jet recording method and apparatus providing a plurality of image

In an ink jet printer, a print head includes (N+1) nozzles arrayed in the paper feed direction. The distance between the adjacent nozzles is K times as long as the dot line pitch P. N and K are each an integer larger than 2, and mutually prime. The quantity of ink droplet discharged from each nozzle is adjusted so as to form on a print paper, dots each having the diameter at least 1.4 times as long as the dot line pitch. An interlaced print as the combination of a print of paths made by the N successive upper nozzles of the print head and a paper feed of N print line pitches is used for the print on the most part of the print paper. A minute-feed print as the combination of a print of paths made by the N successive upper or lower nozzles of the print head and a paper feed of one print line pitch is used for the print on the upper and lower end areas of the print paper that reject a perfect print by the interlaced print. With the combination of the interlaced print and the minute-feed print, a perfect print is made on the entire surface of the print paper.

Serial printer with hybrid print control of interlaced and minute feed

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Nagano-ken, Japan

Hiroaki Tojo