The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 09, 2014
Filed:
Mar. 02, 2012
Kimito Abe, Kanagawa, JP;
Kimito Abe, Kanagawa, JP;
Ricoh Company, Limited, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An image forming apparatus includes: a droplet discharging head that includes nozzles; a light emitting unit that irradiates laser light emitted in a direction intersecting a discharging direction of a droplet discharged from each of the nozzles; a light-receiving unit that receives scattered light when the droplet is irradiated by the laser light and outputs a detection signal; and a droplet discharge detecting unit that detects a droplet discharging state of each of the nozzles based on the detection signal from the light-receiving unit. The light emitting unit emits the laser light such that intensity of the laser light gradually increases or decreases as the laser light travels farther, and the droplet discharge detecting unit selects nozzles so as to cause a variation in the detection signal depending on a droplet discharging state, and detects the droplet discharging state of the detection target nozzles based on the scattered light.