Printhead cleaning methods
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsJordi Bas, Alejandro Mielgo
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
With the purpose of providing an improved cleaning mechanism that accomplishes better results and that may be used in thermal and piezoelectric printing, it is dis-closed a method for cleaning a printhead comprising: moving a wiper along a plurality of nozzles of the printhead; and pressurizing the nozzles within the printhead, the pressurization of each nozzle causing ink to be expelled in an expelling direction; wherein a controller is to detect the position of the wiper and to selectively pressurize at least some of the nozzles for which the position of the wiper corresponds to its expelling direction.
Claims20
A method for cleaning a printhead, comprising:
- moving a wiper along a plurality of nozzles of the printhead;
- detecting, by a controller, that the wiper is at a first position at which the wiper is engaged with a first nozzle of the plurality of nozzles;
- and
- in response to detecting that the wiper is at the first position, selectively pressurizing the first nozzle while the wiper is engaged with the first nozzle, the selective pressurizing of the first nozzle causing expelling of a printing fluid in an expelling direction towards the wiper that is engaged with the first nozzle.
A printing system comprising:
- a printhead receptacle to receive a printhead that comprises a plurality of nozzles to expel a printing fluid in an expelling direction;
- a carriage to receive a wiper;
- and
- a controller to,
- control movement of the carriage to move the wiper along the plurality of nozzles,
- detect that the wiper is at a first position at which the wiper is engaged with a first nozzle of the plurality of nozzles, and
- in response to detecting that the wiper is at the first position, cause selective pressurization of the first nozzle while the wiper is engaged with the first nozzle, the selective pressurization of the first nozzle causing expelling of the printing fluid in the expelling direction through the first nozzle towards the wiper that is engaged with the first nozzle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.