Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Yoshito Mizoguchi

Daisaku Ide

Hitoshi Nishikori

Hirokazu Yoshikawa

Yuji Konno

Satoshi Seki

Hiroshi Tajika

Takeshi Yazawa

Hideaki Takamiya

Yasuo Kotaki

Ryoji Inoue

Kazuo Suzuki

Tetsuya Ohashi

Fumiko Yano

Takao Honda

Toshimitsu Danzuka

Isao Ebisawa

Nobuaki Hara

Satoru Fukushima

Sono Gu

Shinichi Sato

Atsushi Arai

Toshiharu Inui

Yoshiaki Kobayashi

Hisashi Fukushima

Kosuke Yamamoto

Takumi Kaneko

Yoshihide Aikawa

Hajime Nagai

Keishi Osawa

Yoshio Uchikawa

Nobuaki Itakura

An ink jet printing apparatus is provided which can stir ink efficiently and reduce user stresses by specifying the time for stirring ink in an ink tank. A stir operation that reciprocally moves a carriage for stirring ink in the ink tank is executed in parallel with a suction-based operation of sucking out ink from a cap after a print operation.

Ink jet printing apparatus with ink stirring operation

An object of the present invention is to appropriately dispense treatment fluid to wipers, and to always wipe ejection-orifice formation surfaces in a favorable state regardless of an environmental change and the like. To this end, in the present invention, a treatment-fluid holding portion holds treatment fluid used in a wiping operation of wipers. When the wipers contact the treatment-fluid holding portion, the treatment fluid is transferred to the wipers. In an environment where the treatment fluid is thickened, the wipers with ink dispensed thereto are brought into contact with the treatment-fluid holding portion to supply ink to the treatment-fluid holding portion. Thus, the viscosity of the treatment fluid near a contact portion between the treatment-fluid holding portion and the wipers decreases, and the treatment fluid is sufficiently transferred to the wipers.

Inkjet printing apparatus and method of recovering printing head

The present invention provides an ink jet printing apparatus and a method for controlling an ink jet printing apparatus which, during a non-print operation excluding a print operation, can stir ink at a required time and to a required level according to the state of the ink in the ink tank. During a non-print operation excluding a print operation accompanied by a reciprocal movement of the carriage, a stir operation is executed to stir the ink in the ink tank by reciprocating the carriage according to a stir mode. As the stir mode, one of different modes is set according to an elapsed time from the previous stir operation.

Ink jet printing apparatus and ink jet printing method with stir mode for stir operation of ink tank

Image deterioration due to decrease in transfer amount, which arises when a remaining amount of wetting liquid for wet wiping is decreased, is reduced in an ink-jet printing apparatus. When the remaining amount of the wetting liquid decreases to reach a predetermined amount or less, a wetting liquid tank is moved down, and thereby an intrusion amount of a wiper into a transfer portion is made larger than a standard value. This increases an area of the wiper where the wiper comes into contact with the transfer portion, which allows the transfer amount to be maintained at a substantially same level as the reference value. This enables the transfer amount to be prevented from decreasing when the remaining amount decreases, and the transfer amount almost the same as that in an initial stage to be ensured even in a later stage of an apparatus life time.

Ink-jet printing apparatus and method of controlling ink-jet printing apparatus

An apparatus and method of ink jet printing is provided that poor ejection less occurs even where making a printing on a printing medium ready to cause a paper powder, such as a fine art paper. An image is to be printed on a printing medium by performing a relative movement of a printing medium and a printing head having a plurality of arrays each having a plurality of ejection openings. On this occasion, the image is printed by using ejection openings in a number changed in accordance with a type of the printing medium, out of a plurality of ejection openings on the two arrays adjacent to each other.

Apparatus and method of ink jet printing

The present invention provides an ink jet printing apparatus that can print appropriate images by efficiently stirring ink in an ink tank in accordance with its status to homogenize it. When the elapsed time from the end of reciprocation of the carriage is shorter than a specified time, a printing operation is performed after the end of the reciprocation. The number of times that the carriage is reciprocated so as to stir the ink after the printing operation is set in accordance with the number of scans of the carriage during the printing operation.

Ink jet printing apparatus with ink stirring by carriage reciprocation

Mask patterns to be used for multi-pass printing make it possible to make a print with a higher quality at a higher speed. Specifically, by performing a swapping process with adjacency forbiddance, two points in the horizontal direction, or the scanning direction of a printing head, are selected in a buffer in which codes for each scan pass are set depending on printing ratios of a gradation mask. Subsequently, codes are swapped between the two points. By this swap, adjacencies between print permitting areas are eliminated in the mask pattern. As a result, when driving frequencies set for the printing head is kept constant, the scanning speed can be doubled at minimum.

Print data generation method, printing apparatus and method of generating mask

An amount of deposit in an ink receiving portion can be controlled using an inexpensive configuration which does not require any complicated mechanisms or control and which avoids increasing ink consumption. An ejection control section controls ejecting of ink from a printing section into an ink receiving portion. The printing section has a first ink ejecting portion that ejects ink that accumulates easily in the ink receiving portion and a second ink ejecting portion that ejects ink that is hard to accumulate in the ink receiving portion. The ejection control section changes the landing position, in the ink receiving portion, of the ink ejected from the ink ejecting portions depending on the status of accumulation of the ink in the ink receiving portion.

Ink jet printing apparatus and method for recovering the same

A content (an amount of ink to be suctioned, or the number of times ink is preliminarily ejected) of the maintenance process to be performed after the ink tank replacement is made different depending on the amount of ink so far consumed from a tank which is replaced. This makes it possible to check the color mixture which would otherwise occur after the new ink tank is attached to the printing apparatus, and to concurrently manage an amount of waste ink in order that ink should not be consumed more than necessary in a case where the color mixture is less likely to occur.

Ink jet printing apparatus and method of performing a maintenance process

High image quality is maintained even on front and rear ends of a printing medium where deterioration in the image quality is more likely to occur due to reduction in conveyance accuracy of the printing medium. In printing on the front and rear ends, the printing medium being not supported by both conveying means respectively placed upstream and downstream of a printing point in a printing medium conveying direction, a print swath of a printing head and the amount of conveying a printing medium are reduced. Moreover, the reducing print swath and the reducing conveyance amount are designed to be decreased in the cases of selecting a printing medium for high-quality printing as well as a monochrome print mode where image distortion caused by deviation of ink-landing positions is more noticeable due to a small number of colors of ink to be used and low coverage thereof.

Ink jet printing apparatus and printing method

There is disclosed an ink jet recording apparatus which comprises a pit-in ink supply mechanism for interconnecting a main tank and a subtank to be communicated with/separated from each other, and supplying an ink from the subtank to a recording head. In this constitution, an ink residual amount V in the subtank during recording or at the end of recording is selected to be V&#x3e;v/b in which V is the ink residual amount in the subtank during recording or after the end of recording, b(1&#x3e;b&#x3e;0) is a nonvolatile component ratio of the ink,and v is a volume of a liquid chamber of the recording head.

Ink jet recording apparatus and ink supply mechanism

A stable image may not be obtained due to condensation of an ink left in a subtank. According to the present invention, a stable image is always obtained by changing a method for supplying an ink from a main tank to the subtank in accordance with an elapsed time from the end of previous printing.

Ink jet recording device and ink supplying method in the device

An ink-jet printing apparatus according to the present invention has a main tank storing ink, a sub-tank releasably connectable with the main tank through an ink supply passage and a printing head for ejecting ink supplied from the sub-tank, for performing printing by ejecting ink from the printing head to a printing medium. The apparatus includes an ink supply controller for supplying ink from the main tank to the sub-tank through the ink supply passage during a period after completion of printing at a preceding time and before starting printing at a next time, and an ink draining controller for performing ink draining of at least a part of ink remaining in the sub-tank during the period after completion of printing at the preceding time and before starting printing at the next time and in advance of ink supply by the ink supply controller.

Ink-jet printing apparatus and recovery treatment method thereof

An ink jet printing apparatus and an ink jet printing method according to the present invention suppress a variation in the density of ink in a supply channel and a print head without the need for useless recovery operations, thus always providing very reliable high-grade images. The ink jet printing apparatus carries out printing using a print head for ejecting ink. The apparatus includes a scanning unit for causing the print head to scan across a printing medium, a measuring unit for measuring a time from an end of a preceding printing operation until a start of a current printing operation, and a determining unit for determining whether or not a result of measurement executed by the measuring unit exceeds a predetermined value. The scanning unit causes the print head to carry out at least one idle scan before the start of a printing operation depending on a result of determination made by the determining unit.

Ink jet printing apparatus and ink jet printing method

In the ink jet recording apparatus using an on-demand supply system, an image natural and stable in color tone is output. For this purpose, when a capacity of a sub-tank is represented by A, an amount of residual ink remaining after the ink has been discharged is represented by 'a', a ratio by weight of a volatile component in a composition of ink used is represented by B and a ratio of a colorant concentration of ink at saturated state made by repeating ink supply and ink discharge, to an initial colorant concentration of the ink is represented by R, they are satisfying an equation of A/(A&#x2212;a&#xd7;B)=R&#x2266;1.20.

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Kawasaki, Japan

Yoshito Mizoguchi