Toshiba Tec Kabushiki Kaisha

Mitsuo Kubo

Shinichiro Fujii

Yasuhiro Suzuki

Tadao Kamano

Sakae Shiida

Takuro Ito

Tsugio Narushima

Takashi Kashiwagi

Hiroyuki Takada

An apparatus for holding a printing medium on a rotary drum, includes a rotary drum, a suction device, a medium holding mechanism and a medium removing device. The drum has a recess at its outer surface to extend along its rotation center line and rotates at a predetermined speed. A region of the outer surface, which is adjacent to a rearward end of the recess along the rotation direction, is smaller in the diameter than the remaining of the outer surface. The suction device holds by suction the medium onto the outer surface. The holding mechanism has a hook in the recess and selectively drives the hook between close and open positions. At the close position, the hook is placed over the adjacent region while being prevented from radially outwardly projecting from the remaining of the outer surface, and at the open position it is distanced from the adjacent region. When the medium arrives at the adjacent region, its leading end is held by the hook shifted from the open position to the close position and cooperated with the adjacent region and, when the drum rotates a specific number, the hook is returned to the open position. The removing device removes the medium from the outer surface when the drum rotates the specific number and the hook has moved from the close position to the open position.

Apparatus for holding a printing medium on a rotary drum and ink jet

An ink-jet printer includes a rotary drum having a peripheral surface with a plurality of suction holes arranged therein for rotating at a constant speed, a sheet loader for loading a paper sheet to the peripheral surface of the rotary drum, a sheet holding system for holding the paper sheet on the peripheral surface of the rotary drum by applying negative suction pressure to the paper sheet via the suction holes, and a print head for printing an image by jetting ink onto the paper sheet. The rotary drum has an outer cylindrical member which serves as the peripheral surface, an inner cylindrical member having a diameter smaller than the outer cylindrical member, and a partitioning wall for fixing the inner cylindrical member in the outer cylindrical member at a uniform distance from the outer cylindrical member and for partitioning the space between the inner cylindrical member and the outer cylindrical member into a plurality of air rooms in a drum rotational direction. The sheet holding system includes a plurality of suction air holes which are arranged in the inner cylindrical member to associate with the air rooms, a suction unit for suctioning air via the suction air holes to set the air rooms in a negative pressure state, and an air-flow control mechanism for sequentially setting the suction air holes from a closed state to an open state as the suction holes pass a loading position of the paper sheet by rotation of the rotary drum.

Ink-jet printer which securely holds a printing medium without

Growing community of inventors

Yokohama, Japan

Mitsuo Kubo