Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Ko Tokumaru

Yuji Tanaka

Takuya Murata

Takahisa Koike

Jun Shiori

Kenji Kikuchi

Tetsuro Hirota

Shingo Nishizaki

Takeo Seki

Masaru Kaneko

Hiroyuki Kiguchi

Masayuki Yabuuchi

Akiyoshi Nakai

Mitsufumi Yamamoto

Kazuho Satoh

Katsunori Kume

An image recording apparatus includes a recording head including a plurality of nozzles from which ink is ejected, a memory, and one or more hardware processors coupled to the recording head and the memory. The one or more hardware processors are configured to: determine, for each of the plurality of nozzles, whether a position of the corresponding nozzle is a position to eject ink; determine whether a successive ejection operation is necessary for a nozzle out of the plurality of nozzles, whose position is determined as the position to eject ink; and cause ink to be successively ejected at the position to eject ink at a predetermined successive ejection frequency from the nozzle that is determined to have the necessity of the successive ejection operation.

Image recording apparatus, image recording method, and recording medium

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming device and circuitry. The image forming device is configured to form an image on a medium. The circuitry is configured to detect a position of the image forming device relative to the medium. The circuitry is further configured to control the image forming device based on the position of the image forming device detected and image data. The circuitry is further configured to control a system state of the image forming device based on the position of the image forming device associated with movement of the image forming device relative to the medium.

Image forming apparatus, state control method, and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium

An image forming apparatus is configured to form an image on a recording medium by scanning of the image forming apparatus by a user. The image forming apparatus includes an image forming device and processing circuitry. The image forming device includes a plurality of image forming arrays. Each of the image forming arrays includes an image forming portion configured to form the image. The processing circuitry is configured to set an image forming array to be used to form the image, according to a use mode of the image forming apparatus.

Image forming apparatus, image forming method, and storage medium

According to an embodiment, a consumable management apparatus includes a detecting unit, a storage unit, an analyzing circuit, a predicting circuit, and a notifying circuit. The detecting unit detects a use condition of a consumable. The storage unit stores therein a use history of the consumable. The analyzing circuit is configured to analyze a consumption speed of the consumable based on a degree of use frequency of the consumable, the degree of use frequency being obtained from the use history of the consumable stored in the storage unit. The predicting circuit is configured to predict a replacement time of the consumable from the use condition of the consumable detected by the detecting unit and the consumption speed of the consumable analyzed by the analyzing circuit. The notifying circuit is configured to give a notice of the replacement time of the consumable predicted by the predicting circuit.

Consumable management apparatus, consumable management system, and consumable management method

A powder detection device includes a detection mechanism including an oscillation unit and a vibrated member, a vibrating member, and a detection unit. The oscillation unit outputs a signal having a frequency according to a state of a magnetic flux passing a space facing the oscillation unit. The vibrated member affecting the magnetic flux and disposed inside a container to face the oscillation unit via the container is vibrated by the vibrating member in a direction of facing the oscillation unit. The detection unit acquires frequency information of the signal at predetermined periods, determines presence/absence of an error of the detection mechanism based on error information associating a type of the error with a state of the signal, detects vibration of the vibrated member based on a change in the frequency information, and detects a remaining amount of powder in the container based on the detected vibration.

Powder detection device, image forming apparatus, powder detection method, and non-transitory recording medium

A fixing control apparatus which controls a fixing apparatus which includes multiple heating elements to fix, to a recording material, an unfixed toner image formed based on image data is disclosed. The fixing control apparatus includes an image presence/absence determining unit which determines presence/absence of an image for each of multiple areas into which the image data are divided; a heating element selecting unit which selects a heating element located at a position corresponding to an area in which the image is present from the multiple heating elements; and a heating element driving unit which causes the heating element selected by the heating element selecting unit to be heated.

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Tokyo, Japan

Ko Tokumaru