Hewlett-Packard Company

Marc A Yousey

Jefferson Patrick Ward

Bret K Taylor

James M Brenner

Dawn M Beachnau Hood

Ronald E Sheely

Barbara H Rider

Bryan S Talbot

An ink jet printer wherein unidirectional or bidirectional printing is adaptively selected for predetermined print modes as a function of whether bidirectional alignment has been performed.

Method of improving print quality by selectively changing print direction

Document characteristics such as print media and selectable print quality variations are used to determine printhead servicing, e.g., service spitting of ink-jet nozzles. If the next sweep contains the next color in the pen or printhead set, and the next sweep would be greater than the number of sweeps since the last firing of that color ink&mdash;whether on page or at the service station&mdash;and the last sweep did not fire droplets of the color, a decap service spit and nozzle firing tracking reset is triggered. All service calls spit fire all nozzles, so all timer values are reset whenever at a service spit. Reaching or exceeding a fail-safe limit similarly triggers a decap service spit or other known manner service station operations.

Ink-jet look-ahead servicing

Growing community of inventors

Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Marc A Yousey