Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Fluid or fluid source handling means
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-22
2002-09-24
Barlow, John (Department: 2853)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Fluid or fluid source handling means
C347S101000, C347S043000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06454402
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet printing method and an ink-jet printing apparatus, and particularly to an ink-jet printing method and an ink-jet printing apparatus for printing by the use of treating liquid which insolubilizes a coloring material in an ink. An ink-jet printing method and an ink-jet printing apparatus according to the present invention are applicable to equipment for printing characters, images or the like on a recording medium such as paper, such as a printer, a copying machine and a facsimile machine, and are used in these items of equipment as a printing mechanism.
2. Related Background Art
Treating liquid for insolubilizing a coloring material such as a dye or a pigment in an ink is generally used to improve the water fastness of printed images or the like. The present applicant, however, has focused attention on the fact that the treating liquid significantly affects not only the improvement of such water fastness, but also printability such as density (for example, optical density (OD)) of printed images, sharpness of a printed image edge portion and fixing ability, and has made various proposals.
There has been made, for example, a proposal in which ink dots are formed with a goal of improved OD value by the use of ink using pigment as coloring material, and by use of a treating liquid and by mixing the ink and the treating liquid on a recording sheet.
The combination of ink using the pigment as coloring material and the treating liquid is also preferable to form dots having a so-called sharp boundary, which hardly causes any blurred contours to dots to be formed, in addition to the improved OD.
As described above, printing using the combination of the ink using a pigment as coloring material and the treating liquid is capable of implementing high OD and high sharpness in the image edge portion, thus enabling unprecedented, high-quality printing. The ink-jet printing system, however, leaves room for improvement in terms of the fixing ability to improve the printability.
In a case where, for example, a number of sheets of printing paper are continuously printed, a number of sheets of printing paper discharged after printing will be sequentially stacked. In this case, if fixing of the ink onto the printing paper, that is, the penetration of the ink into the printing paper is insufficient, the ink remains on the surface of the printing paper, the remaining Ink will be transferred onto another sheet of printing paper to contaminate the printing paper. If the ink fixing rate is slow in this manner irrespective of the capacity of the printing head and the printing paper conveying system, it is necessary to make the rate of the discharged sheet itself slower in order to prevent the printing paper from being contaminated thereby. Therefore, the fixing ability in the ink-jet printing-system becomes a comparatively great cause for restraining the number of sheets of printing paper to be outputted per unit time.
On the other hand, as an attempt to improve such fixing ability, there is known a method of using an ink having a high penetrability irrespective of whether or not the treating liquid is used. However, as the printing result using such ink, the OD is low, and the sharpness of the image to be printed is not so excellent.
There is also known a printing method, in which treating liquid having high penetrability and ink using dye as coloring material are used, the treating liquid is first imparted to the printing paper, and the ink is superposedly imparted thereon to thereby insolubilize the dye in the ink. Although, however, the fixing ability is improved by the use of the treating liquid having high penetrability, the OD is low and the sharpness of the image edge is also inferior. This tendency is particularly noticeable when so-called plain paper, which is mostly used for ink-jet printing, is printed.
Even if the treating liquid is used in combination with ink in order to print an image having a high OD and an excellent sharpness as described above, there is the problem that it is difficult to make the printability and the fixing ability compatible. Further, when this fixing ability, that is, penetrability is taken into consideration, there derives a problem of so-called strike-through property in which, in a case where the penetrability is simply enhanced, the coloring material penetrates deeply enough to be able to observe the printed image from the back side of the printed paper, and therefore, it is not an easy technical problem to make the OD or the like and the fixing ability compatible.
The present invention is achieved to solve such technical problems, and is aimed to provide an ink-jet printing method and an ink-jet printing apparatus capable of performing printing having unprecedented, high-level fixing ability while maintaining the OD and sharpness in the image edge portion at high levels, and further capable of effectively restraining the strike-through problem.
It is particularly an object of the present invention to provide an ink-jet printing method and an ink-jet printing apparatus capable of always showing the fixing ability of a fixed level or higher on various types of plain paper. In this respect, the “plain paper” here means printing paper generally for use In printers, electrophotographic systems or the like.
Also, other objects of the present invention become apparent also from the following description in the specification.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore, according to the present invention, there is provided an ink-jet printing method comprising the steps of penetrating a treating liquid which contains a component to react chemically with a pigment in an ink and has a penetrability onto a surface layer of a printing medium, and impacting ink-droplets containing the pigment to a portion, among a whole surface of the printing medium, where the treating liquid has been imparted, wherein a penetrating depth of the. pigment applied to the treating liquid on the surface layer of the printing medium is deeper than a penetrating depth of the pigment alone applied to the printing medium on which no treating liquid is imparted and is shallower than a penetrating depth of the treating liquid.
Also, there is provided an ink-jet printing method comprising the steps of forming an ink-receiving part on a surface layer of a printing medium and conducting printing by depositing an ink so as to contact with the ink-receiving part, wherein the ink-receiving part is formed by depositing to a surface of the printing medium a treating liquid comprising a penetrating agent and an insolubilizer to a coloring material in the ink, the ink comprises a predetermined amount of a pigment as the coloring material, an average liquid thickness per pixel of the treating liquid forming the ink-receiving part at the impact on the printing medium is not more than 10 &mgr;m, a volume of the treating liquid to a volume of the ink per pixel is not less than ⅛, and an average liquid thickness of the ink per pixel at the impact on the printing medium is from 8 &mgr;m to 20 &mgr;m.
Further, there is provided an ink-jet printing apparatus to conduct printing by forming an ink-receiving part on a surface layer of a printing medium and then depositing an ink so as to contact with the ink-receiving part, wherein the ink-receiving part is formed by depositing to a surface of the printing medium a treating liquid comprising a penetrating agent and an insolubilizer to a coloring material in the ink, the ink comprises a predetermined amount of a pigment as the coloring material, an average liquid thickness per pixel of the treating liquid forming the ink-receiving part at the impact on the printing medium is not more than 10 &mgr;m, a volume of the treating liquid to a volume of the ink per pixel is not less than ⅛, and an average liquid thickness of the ink per pixel at the impact on the printing medium is from 8 &mgr;m to 20 &mgr;m
Also, according to the present invention, there is provided an ink-j
Koitabashi Noribumi
Tsuboi Hitoshi
Barlow John
Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
Fitzpatrick ,Cella, Harper & Scinto
Shah Manish S.
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