Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Ejector mechanism
Patent
1998-03-11
2000-08-15
Royer, William J.
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Ejector mechanism
347 30, B41J 2165
Patent
active
061025178
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus which receives ink from an exchangeable ink cartridge and prints characters and the like on a print media while jetting ink droplets through nozzle orifices thereof.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
For example, an ink jet printing apparatus comprises a print head and an ink cartridge for containing ink therein. In the print head, a drive signal is applied to piezoelectric elements, heating elements or the like. Ink is pressurized by energy generated by those elements, and caused to be jet out in the form of ink droplets through nozzle orifices.
A print quality is determined by a resolution of the print head, and depends largely on viscosity of ink and a spread of ink in the print medium. For this reason, study and development are made for the improvements of ink characteristic, print head driving method adaptable to the characteristics of like ink, and maintenance conditions of purging periods in purging ink for preventing the clogging of the print head, the purging of ink from the print head being capped, and the like.
A remarkable improvement of the print quality of the printing apparatus is achieved when the ink characteristic and the print head driving method are both improved in harmony with each other. Manufacturers can incorporate such technical results of the development into the products. When a situation arises where altered control data must be loaded into the printing apparatus after delivered to the market, it is necessary to return the printing apparatus to its factory and replace an old storing means with a storing means storing the altered control data. This is almost impossible when considering the cost and labor to effect such work.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a novel ink jet printing apparatus which can easily and automatically alter the print head driving method and the maintenance condition for removing the clogging of the print head in accordance with a change of the specification of ink, and an ink cartridge in use with the ink jet printing apparatus.
Ink as a chemical product is contained in the ink cartridge. Even if the ink cartridge run out of ink, there is a chance that ink is left in the ink cartridge. Therefore, ink per se as a chemical product and noncorrosiveness of high polymer material of the ink cartridge will contaminate environments. To avoid this, it is desirable to collect ink cartridges that run out have ink of, and refill the used ink cartridges with new ink and use the regenerated ones again. However, the regenerated products are somewhat degraded in reliability performance. For this reason, it is necessary to secure a satisfactory print quality, to consider an adverse affect on the print head, and to announce that the product is a regenerated one.
A second object of the present invention is to provide a novel ink jet printing apparatus which can secure a reliable print quality and satisfactory functionality of a regenerated ink cartridge, and an ink cartridge in use with the ink jet printing apparatus.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to the present invention, there is provided an ink jet printing apparatus comprising: an ink jet print head mounted on a carriage reciprocatively moved relative to a print medium; an ink cartridge for supplying ink to the ink jet print head; print control means for outputting a drive signal to the ink jet print head in accordance with print data; head maintenance control means for discharging ink not contributing to print so as to secure a normal ink discharge from the ink jet print head; control data storing means for storing control data for the print control means and the head maintenance control means; and ink characteristic data storing means for storing ink characteristic data based on a nature of ink, and being disposed on the ink cartridge; wherein a control mode of either of the print control means and the head maintenance control means may be altered by the ink characteristic data.
With such a construction, th
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Hiraide Shoichi
Kanaya Munehide
Kobayashi Takao
Koshino Kazuo
Usui Minoru
Royer William J.
Seiko Epson Corporation
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