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:
Apr. 28, 2015
Filed:
Feb. 24, 2012
Yasukazu Ono, Kanagawa, JP;
Yasukazu Ono, Kanagawa, JP;
Ricoh Company, Limited, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An image forming apparatus includes: a droplet discharging head that includes nozzle rows; a light emitting unit that irradiates a droplet with laser light emitted in a direction intersecting a discharging direction of the droplet; a light-receiving unit that receives scattered light scattered when the droplet is irradiated by the laser light and outputs a signal corresponding to an amount of the scattered light; and a droplet discharge detecting unit that detects a droplet discharging status of the nozzles based on the signal. The laser light is emitted with an optical axis shifted from middle between two adjacent nozzle rows; and the droplet discharge detecting unit selects two nozzles adjacent in a direction intersecting the nozzle rows as detection target nozzles, and detects the droplet discharging status of the detection target nozzles based on the scattered light scattered when droplets are simultaneously discharged from the detection target nozzles.