Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Controller
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-12
2003-03-18
Barlow, John (Department: 2853)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Controller
C347S023000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06533383
ABSTRACT:
The present application claims priority from Japanese Patent Applications Nos. Hei. 10-320577 filed on Nov. 11, 1998, Hei. 11-235246 filed on Aug. 23, 1999 and Hei. 11-301447 filed on Oct. 22, 1999, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet type printing apparatus which is supplied with ink from detachable ink cartridge and ejects ink droplets from a nozzle aperture of a print head to a recording medium, and to an ink cartridge suitably installed in the ink jet type printing apparatus. More particularly, the invention relates to an ink cartridge provided with a memory device for writing and reading information relating to the ink contained therein, to an ink jet type printing apparatus which installs thereon the ink cartridge capable of controlling access to the memory device of the ink cartridge, and to a method of controlling the same.
2. Related Art
Generally, an ink jet type printing apparatus is provided with a print head which supplies drive signals to a piezoelectric transducer or heating means in response to print data, and pressurizes the ink by the energy generated by the piezoelectric transducer or the heating means to thereby eject ink droplets from nozzle apertures, and with an ink cartridge accommodating the ink to be supplied to the print head.
The print quality is determined by the resolution of the print head such as size or diameter of each of the nozzle aperture and the number of the apertures. In addition to the resolution of the print head, the print quality is also influenced by the type, or specification of ink or, for example, viscosity of ink. Further, the print quality is also determined by the bleeding condition of ink ejected on a recording medium. Therefore, the ink characteristics has been improved to enhance the print quality, or the driving operation for the print head has been improved to perform an optimum print quality for the particular ink characteristics even if the printing apparatus installs a conventional type of ink. Furthermore, the head maintenance condition has also been improved with respect, for example, to the cyclic period of the cleaning operation or the flushing operation to prevent the nozzle apertures from clogging.
Thus, the print quality of a printing apparatus can be improved as a whole only when the combination of the ink characteristics with the appropriate driving operation for the print head is improved, not only by the ink characteristics. The result of such technical development can be reflected on newly manufactured ink jet type printing apparatuses before shipping to the marketplace. However, such technical development would be practically impossible after the printing apparatus is shipped, because the printing apparatus has to be brought to a service center, and the memory means which records the control data for the printing apparatus would have to be exchanged.
In view of the difficulties as described above, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2594912, there has been proposed a printing apparatus which employs an ink cartridge provided at a surface thereof with a non-volatile rewritable memory, and data stored in the memory indicating the residual ink is read out by the printing apparatus for controlling the printing operation.
In addition, there has been proposed another process for controlling the print operation of an ink jet type printing apparatus in accordance with information recorded in a memory element disposed on an ink cartridge. For example, published Unexamined Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 6-126981 discloses an ink cartridge which is provided with a memory element such as an electrically erasable and programmable read only memory, or EEPROM. The memory element previously stores information relating to the print control, and the printing apparatus reads out information and utilizes it to control printing and also writes data of, for example, residual ink calculated by the printing apparatus.
The conventional printing apparatuses as described above may be operated under an optimum condition by adapting the print control to information relating to the residual ink. However, in a case where a user treats the printing apparatus inappropriately, for example, if the power is shut down roughly without proceeding through a designed power-off process which is not expected by the manufacturer, data of the consumed amount of ink cannot be written in the memory of the ink cartridge, which may result in causing a big difference of residual ink amount according to data stored in the memory element from that of the real ink cartridge. Further, the same problem would occur when an accident happens such as, for example, an inevitable blackout or when the power socket of the printing apparatus is accidentally pulled out of the outlet by entangling user's or other person's feet in the power line.
On the other hand, the conventional printing apparatus may accompany another problem as follows. The rewritable memory means which does not require power for holding the stored data requires longer time for writing data to or reading from the memory means. Therefore, frequent writing and reading data would deteriorate the throughput of the printing operation. Specifically, when data is written in the memory means during a printing operation, a central processing unit of the printing apparatus is given a heavy workload because it has to process both the print control and the data writing control at the same time. In addition, normally the data writing operation is performed after moving the ink cartridge on a carriage to a predetermined position which takes time. Further, in case of employing a non-contact type semiconductor storage means, reading and writing data takes longer time than the other type of the memory means, and the decreased throughput of a non-contact type semiconductor storage means more seriously degrades performance. As a result of the above problems, the conventional printing apparatuses having memory means would raise a problem in much lowering the print speed.
On the other hand, there are generally two different carriage types of ink jet printing apparatus, i.e., an on-carriage type in which an ink cartridge is mounted on a moving carriage provided with a print head on one hand, and an off-carriage type in which an ink cartridge is mounted on a fixed part of the printing apparatus apart from a moving carriage. According to the on-carriage type printing apparatus, since the ink cartridge is located adjacent to the print head the memory device may be affected adversely by noise generated by drive pulse signals when the print head is driven. For example, data may be changed or damaged if the memory device receives the noise while the printing apparatus reads data from or writes data in the memory device. Such a problem is more serious in case of a semiconductor memory device of a non-contact type which employs electro-magnetic signals because the drive signals for the print head would propagate strongly in the air and may be interposed as a noise on the electro-magnetic signals supplied to the memory device.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention was made in view of the foregoing difficulties and problems accompanying the conventional ink jet type printing apparatus.
An object of the present invention is to provide an ink jet type printing apparatus capable of assuredly writing and reading data relating to ink in and from a memory device attached on an ink cartridge without deteriorating the throughput of the printing speed of the printing apparatus.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of controlling an ink jet type printing apparatus to assuredly write and read data relating to ink in and from a memory device attached on an ink cartridge without deteriorating the throughput of the printing speed of the printing apparatus.
Further, it is also an object of the present invention to provide an ink jet type printing apparatus capabl
Saruta Toshihisa
Shinada Satoshi
Huffman Julian D.
Seiko Epson Corporation
Sughrue & Mion, PLLC
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