Hewlett-packard Company

Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

E.i. Dupont De Nemours and Company

Mark S Hickman

Ronald Albert Askeland

Nicholas Nicoloff, Jr

Majid Azmoon

Donald G Harris

Keshava A Prasad

John L Stoffel, Jr

Brent W Richtsmeier

Leonard Slevin

Steve Orrin Rasmussen

Alpha N Doan

John A Christianson

Douglas L Franz

William James Allen

John A Underwood

Kenneth R Williams

Clayton L Holstun

Xavier Bruch

Bret K Taylor

Peter C Morris

Josep Maria Serra

William D Meyer

Wayne Richard

Paul William Martin

Frank Drogo

Jorge Castano

Stephen King Glass

Michele E Shepard

Joan Manel Garcia

Cathy A Rotering

Matt Bonner

Chris Lesniak

Catherine B Hunt

Daryl E Anderson

Jefferson Patrick Ward

Robert M Yraceburu

Stephen D Panshin

John R Moffatt

George H Corrigan

Raymond J Adamic

James P Shields

Howard Matrick

Paul David Gast

Michael J Barbour

Loren E Johnson

Richard I Klaus

Christopher M Lesniak

Xavier Gros

Bruce A Axten

Steven O Miller

Mark L Choy

David M Wetchler

Rowdy Kelvin Webb

Antoni Gil Miquel

Lance B Cleveland

Amy Shipman

David H Donovan

Corrina A Hall

Ronald S Gompertz

Thieu X Dang

Sandra Y Okazaki

Michael D Dobbs

James E Moore, Sr

John T Rich

Techniques pertaining to printing a document are disclosed. A printer may include a replaceable marking supply that is either an unrestricted trade supply or a restricted subscription supply. The printer may accommodate either of the unrestricted trade supply or the restricted subscription supply at any given moment.

System and method for managing subscription and trade based printer supplies

A printmode for an inkjet printer including a plurality of print nozzles and an edge guide projecting into a printzone into which at least one of the plurality of print nozzles may be transported for deposition of a fluid onto a print media, the printmode including a printmask defining a print disable zone corresponding to a pre-selected area of the printzone that includes an area of the edge guide that projects into the printzone.

Printmode for narrow margin printing

The present invention is embodied in a system and method for producing efficient ink drop overlap filled with a pseudo hexagonal grid pattern. In general, the present invention can include an inkjet printhead assembly that incorporates a preprogrammed correction scheme or schemes [1-n] (herein correction scheme will refer to all applications), for correcting systematic ink drop placement errors of the inkjet printhead. The printing system of the present invention uses a unique ink dot pattern, called a pseudo-hexagonal close pack system. The present invention optimizes the addressable grid for dot placement, pseudo hexagonal close pack system, with an efficient geometry for packing circles to fill an area, similar to the hexagonal close pack system. However, the present invention in creating dots on a non-symmetric grid is supported by available software and is not computationally complex.

System and method for producing efficient ink drop overlap filled with a pseudo hexagonal grid pattern

A program with complete conditions for a usable mask yields a unitary mask, each try. One mask pattern is used throughout an image, but may be 'tiled'. Preferably the program, for given mask position, expresses favorability of several candidate pass numbers as a 'neighborhood constraint' in the form of a weight; distills the weights into one weight for each pass number; based on that, chooses a number for the position; and iterates for all positions. Many preferences are very useful, e. g. automatically balancing randomness vs. determinism, and several generalized relative notations. Another invention facet uses an input text file of mask constraints; a program reads constraints from the file, applies them, forms a mask and stores/uses it. Another reprocesses a mask for best image quality, fixing its own imperfections of first-round mask forming.

Fast building of masks for use in incremental printing

The present invention is embodied in a system and method for producing efficient ink drop overlap filled with a pseudo hexagonal grid pattern. In general, the present invention can include an inkjet printhead assembly that incorporates a preprogrammed correction scheme or schemes &lsqb;1-n&rsqb; (herein correction scheme will refer to all applications), for correcting systematic ink drop placement errors of the inkjet printhead. The printing system of the present invention uses a unique ink dot pattern, called a pseudo-hexagonal close pack system. The present invention optimizes the addressable grid for dot placement, pseudo hexagonal close pack system, with an efficient geometry for packing circles to fill an area, similar to the hexagonal close pack system. However, the present invention in creating dots on a non-symmetric grid is supported by available software and is not computationally complex.

An ink jet printer ( ) print head having multiple, redundant ink energizing elements arranged into clusters or groups ( ), each of which attempts to expel ink onto media in a predetermined sequence. The effects of an ink energizing element failure are mitigated by using redundant elements, each of which fires in response to the same data.

Apparatus and method for printing with showerhead groups

The present invention is embodied in a system and method for using lower data rates and less memory, for high nozzles per inch printheads. The printing system of the present invention includes a printhead assembly and an ink supply for printing ink on print media. The printhead assembly includes a printhead body, ink channels, a substrate, such as a semiconductor wafer, a nozzle member and a barrier layer located between the wafer and nozzle member. The nozzle member has plural nozzles coupled to respective ink channels and is secured at a predefined location to the printhead body with a suitable adhesive layer. The printhead has a controller which can be firmware, software or any suitable processor that can control the ejection of ink from the plural nozzles. The controller can be defined in the integrated circuit as receiving data stored in the data in the buffer memory, assigning primitive addresses in the heater array from the data, and determining the firing pulse rate of the heater elements in the heater array. The controller can be created by any suitable integrated circuit manufacturing or programming process.

System and method for using lower data rates for printheads with closely spaced nozzles

A program with complete conditions for a usable mask yields a unitary mask, each try. One mask pattern is used throughout an image, but may be &ldquo;tiled&rdquo;. Preferably the program, for given mask position, expresses favorability of several candidate pass numbers as a &ldquo;neighborhood constraint&rdquo; in the form of a weight; distills the weights into one weight for each pass number; based on that, chooses a number for the position; and iterates for all positions. Many preferences are very useful, e.g. automatically balancing randomness vs. determinism, and several generalized relative notations. Another invention facet uses an input text file of mask constraints; a program reads constraints from the file, applies them, forms a mask and stores/uses it. Another reprocesses a mask for best image quality, fixing its own imperfections of first-round mask forming.

Micro-stepping a print media transport in an ink-jet hard copy apparatus such that the steps are smaller than the nozzle spacing of the drop generators on a printhead when using multiple printheads per colorant provides a resulting higher resolution pixel placement grid and allows choosing which nozzle to fire on which printing pass in order to optimize drop-to-drop alignment between the like colorant printheads.

Ink-jet print pass microstepping

In accordance with the invention, an ink-jet printing system and fluid supply configuration are disclosed that utilize the advantages of reactive fluids while allowing for maximum flexibility in the design and architecture of the ink-jet printing system. The ink-jet-printing apparatus includes a printhead portion having at least one integral printhead portion, the printhead portion having at least two ejector portions; and at least one reservoir portion associated with the printhead portion, the reservoir portion having at least two reservoir chambers, each reservoir chamber for providing fluid to one of the at least two ejector portions, one of the chambers including a reactant fluid and the other chamber including at least one ink non-reactive with the reactant fluid.

Multi-chamber fluid supply

Methods of printing a desired color image on a printing medium by construction from individual ink drops deposited in pixel arrays includes passing a multiple-nozzle ink-discharging pen or an odd number of staggered pen cartridges across the medium multiple times, each pass creating a portion of a respective segment of the image, and periodically advancing the medium so that portions of successively different segments are created by the pen(s). During each pass, the &ldquo;portion-creating&rdquo; function includes discharging from the pen(s) an odd submultiple of the full density of ink desired in the segment of the desired image that is being created, so that printing full density in each segment requires an odd number of passes. The medium is advanced by an odd submultiple of the height of the segment being created in each pass and is preferably advanced after each pass of the pen(s). The portion-creating includes creation by the pen(s) of a multiplicity of spaced-apart diagonal lines. Preferably in each passing step after a first one, the diagonal lines are created in positions such as to at least partially fill in unprinted spaces between previously created diagonal lines. Preferably the diagonal lines are all at a substantially common angle (ideally forty-five degrees) to a pen-scanning direction.

Odd number of passes, odd number of advances, and separated-diagonal-line masking, in liquid-ink printers

Non-black ink jet printheads are arranged in a printer carriage such that the printhead nozzle arrays are non-overlapping in the carriage swath direction. A fixer printhead is positioned such that the print medium is first advanced past the fixer printhead prior to reaching any of the other printheads. The printheads are selectively driven during each direction of a bi-directional carriage movement, and the print medium is incrementally advanced before each change in carriage movement direction. The order of laying down droplets of different colors is the same during the movement in each direction, thereby eliminating bi-directional hue shifting print artifacts.

Printhead arrangement to eliminate bi-directional hue shifting

A method of automatically optimizing the controllable parameters related to producing printed material on a hardcopy output device is provided, along with a hardcopy output device configured for implementing this method. Users require different types of printed objects to have different characteristics. Specifically, business graphics need to be sharp and vivid, photographic images should look realistic, and text must be black, crisp and clear. By extracting, analyzing and conditioning data generated during a printing stream, the various regions of text, graphics and photographic images on a sheet are distinguished, characterized, and printed. The resulting hardcopy output has a custom balancing of color which is pleasing to the human eye for each type of image printed, and which has print characteristics tailored for the specific elements on the page.

Automatic optimization of hardcopy output

A multi-swath, ink-jet pen carriage and pen arrangement provides optimization for redundant colorant pens. Packing of electrical and fluidic interconnects enables an increased printing throughput with increased color combinations in an apparatus that minimizes product size for a given number of pens in the apparatus.

Pen stagger in color inkjet hard copy apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Mark S Hickman