Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Satoshi Kitai

Masahiko Umezawa

Yoshiaki Murayama

Kouichi Serizawa

Takeshi Murase

Atsushi Takahashi

Tomoki Kobayashi

Masashi Hayashi

Shinsuke Ikegami

Kazuya Koizumi

Yuki Sawai

Kouich Serizawa

A printing apparatus prints by discharging ink to a transfer member from a first printhead, discharging a transfer accelerator to the ink from a second printhead, and transferring an image formed on the transfer member to a print medium. When inspecting a discharge state of each of plural nozzles provided in each of the first and second printheads, the apparatus controls the second printhead so as to discharge the transfer accelerator from at least one nozzle of the second printhead to a discharge area of the transfer member to which the ink is discharged by the first printhead for inspection of the discharge states of the plural nozzles of the first printhead, while inspecting a discharge state of a nozzle different from the at least one nozzle of the second printhead by discharging the transfer accelerator from the nozzle.

Printing apparatus and inspection method therefor

In at least one embodiment, a number of nozzle rows in a first area on a side of one end of a first substrate closest to one end of a print head is set to be lower than a number of nozzle rows on a central side of the print head relative to the first area, and energy for driving the element on the first substrate is set to be larger than energy for driving the element on a second substrate on the central side of the print head relative to the first substrate to set a dot to be formed on the recording medium by ink discharged from a nozzle in the first area to be larger than a dot to be formed on the recording medium by ink discharged from a nozzle in the second substrate.

Recording apparatus

A printing apparatus for printing using a printhead including a plurality of nozzles, each configured to discharge ink, and a plurality of sensors, corresponding to the plurality of nozzles, for detecting a discharge state of ink from the plurality of nozzles, judges a discharge state. The apparatus prints, based on print data, an image by driving the printhead under a first drive condition to discharge the ink from the printhead to a first area, discharges ink to a second area different from the first area by driving the printhead, based on inspection data, under a second drive condition different from the first drive condition, and judges a discharge state of each nozzle by monitoring an output from each sensor at a timing of driving the printhead under the second drive condition.

Printing apparatus and method of judging nozzle discharge state of printing apparatus

According to an embodiment of the present invention, to improve processing performance, a printing apparatus that performs printing by using a printhead formed by a plurality of headchips includes one CPU, a table configured to store processing contents set by the CPU, and a plurality of processing units configured to process, in parallel, printing data to be used in each headchip by commonly using the table and in accordance with the processing contents set in the table. In addition, the apparatus includes a plurality of control units configured to wait for the completion of the processing of each processing unit, synchronize the plurality of processing units for next processing, and cause each of the processing units to execute the next processing in accordance with the processing contents set in the table.

Printing apparatus and control method thereof

A recording apparatus includes a recording head having a plurality of recording elements configured to generate energy for discharging ink, a first heating element configured to heat ink in the vicinity of one of said recording elements positioned at a first position, insufficiently to discharge ink, and a second heating element positioned at a second position different from the first position, which are arranged on a same substrate, a heating control unit configured to control the heating operation of the ink by driving the first and the second heating elements by applying voltage to the first and the second heating elements, and a recording control unit configured to control the recording operation by driving the plurality of recording elements, wherein the heating control unit is configured to control the heating operation to drive the first heating element and the second heating element at timings different from each other.

Recording apparatus and recording method

Priority order is updated so that an ejection port that is selected as an ejection port subjected to ejection failure determination in a pixel row in which a previous ejection operation is to be performed has the lowest priority order, which is used for selecting an ejection port subjected to ejection failure determination, in a pixel row in which a subsequent ejection operation is to be performed.

A printing apparatus includes a control unit that, when continuously printing on a plurality of cut sheets of a same size, controls a print unit to cause a transfer member to continue movement, controls the print unit and a supply unit so as to stop supply of a cut sheet by the supply unit based on information concerning a time taken to process image data representing an image of a print target by an image processing unit, and controls the print unit not to form an ink image in a partial area on the transfer member that passes through a transfer area at a timing when the supply of the cut sheet to the transfer area is stopped, and to form the ink image in a remaining area.

Printing apparatus and control method that control movement of a transfer member

An inkjet printing apparatus uses a printing head including a plurality of nozzle arrays each including a plurality of nozzles arrayed in a first direction, the nozzle arrays being arranged in a second direction. A compensating unit compensates for an ejection failure of a defective nozzle by causing a compensating nozzle to eject ink to a predetermined pixel area in a case where the print data corresponding to the defective nozzle indicates ink ejection to the predetermined pixel area. The compensating unit determines the compensating nozzle such that the compensating nozzle satisfies both a first condition that the compensating nozzle is not a defective nozzle and a second condition that the print data indicates that nozzles belonging to the nozzle array including the compensating nozzle do not eject ink to a pixel area corresponding to N pixels (N is a positive integer) around the predetermined pixel area in the first direction.

Inkjet printing apparatus and inkjet printing method

A pixel row in an arrangement direction or an orthogonal direction is divided into processing groups including pixels at every predetermined pixel count in the pixel row. Nondischarge complementary processing is sequentially performed on the divided plurality of processing groups.

Image processing apparatus and image processing method

A recording apparatus using a recording head having a first recording element array and a second recording element array for one color component includes a first memory configured to store a plurality of first patterns which correspond to first, second, and third gradation values and in which dot data is allocated to the first recording element array or the second recording element array, a second pattern which corresponds to fourth gradation value and in which dot data is allocated to the first recording element array, and a third pattern corresponds to fifth gradation value and in which dot data is allocated to the second recording element array, a data acquisition unit configured to acquire multi-valued data at the first, the second, the third, the fourth and the fifth gradation value, a generation unit configured to generate dot data based on the multi-valued data generated by the acquisition unit.

Apparatus and method for recording a maintenance pattern

A reading apparatus includes an image reading unit that reads an image line-by-line and generates an image signal, a signal processing unit that performs signal processing on the image signal, a reference clock generation unit that generates a reference clock signal, and a PLL unit that generates a driving clock signal from the reference clock signal to be supplied to one of the image reading unit, the signal processing unit, and the reference clock generation unit. Skew in the synchronization between the reference clock signal and a driving clock signal is detected, and in the case where skew in the synchronization has been detected during image reading operations performed by the image reading unit, the image reading unit is controlled to read the image having returned to a position that is a predetermined number of lines previous to the current reading position.

Reading apparatus

A printing apparatus includes a conveying mechanism, a printing unit, a drying unit, and a control unit. The conveying mechanism conveys a sheet and the printing unit applies an ink onto the sheet conveyed by the conveying mechanism to perform print operation. The drying unit may dry the sheet on which an ink has been applied by the printing unit. The control unit controls the conveying mechanism, the printing unit, and the drying unit. The control unit controls the conveying mechanism to vary a sheet conveyance amount per unit time while print operation of one job is in progress. The control unit further controls the drying unit depending on variation in the sheet conveyance amount while the print operation of the one job is in progress.

Printing apparatus

An image reading apparatus reads a document on a line-by-line basis by using a reading unit. The image reading apparatus includes a modulation unit configured to modulate a clock signal at a predetermined period, a trigger signal generation unit configured to generate trigger signal for reading one line in the reading unit, a driving signal generation unit configured to generate a driving signal of the reading unit based on the clock signal output from the modulation unit and the trigger signal, and an output unit configured to change output timing of the driving signal within a range of the predetermined period each time the trigger signals are output predetermined times.

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Kawasaki, Japan

Satoshi Kitai