Canon Finetech Inc.

Yoshinori Morooka

Yoshiyuki Shino

In an inkjet printing apparatus using plural line type inkjet printing heads for one color ink, and forming an image by dividing image data into pieces corresponding to the plural printing heads, a complementary printing operation using a simple configuration is achieved without causing a substantial decrease in printing speed even when one printing head has a poorly ejecting nozzle. When a one printing head has a poorly ejecting nozzle, a corresponding nozzle of another printing head complements the printing operation assigned to the poorly ejecting nozzle. At this time, the same piece of divided image data is fed to the one and the other printing heads. Then, the printing operation of the one printing head is made invalid only at the timing of driving the poorly ejecting nozzle, and the printing operation of the second printing head is made valid only at the timing of driving the corresponding nozzle.

Inkjet printing apparatus

An ink jet printing apparatus having excellent throughput can continue a printing operation without interruption if one or more line heads falls into an unprintable state when the apparatus is printing images of the same color using a plurality of line heads. For this purpose, image data for images of the same color is divided and the divided image data is supplied to such a line head of the plurality of line heads intended to form images of the same color that is capable of ejecting ink properly, so that the ink ejectable line head performs the printing operation according to the supplied image data.

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Mitaka, Japan

Yoshinori Morooka