Image forming apparatus and method of controlling image forming apparatus with amplifier gain control

#The present application is based on, and claims priority from JP Application Serial Number 2019-070160, filed Apr. 1, 2019, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

#The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus in which signals are transmitted through a cable and further relates to a method of controlling the image forming apparatus.

#JP-A-2010-239326 discloses an equalizer that amplifies a signal that has been attenuated through a transmission path.

#FIG. 1 illustrates a configuration of an image forming apparatus according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

#FIG. 2 is a block diagram of configurations of the main substrate and the carriage substrate in the image forming apparatus.

#FIG. 3 is a graph illustrating the relationship between the number of times that the carriage moves and the attenuation characteristics of the cable.

#With reference to the accompanying drawings, a description will be given below of an image forming apparatus 1 and a method of controlling the image forming apparatus 1. As illustrated in FIG. 1, the image forming apparatus 1 includes a carriage 5, a main substrate 10, a carriage substrate 20, a cable 30, and a carriage motor 40. Herein, the main substrate 10 is an example of a “first substrate”, and the carriage substrate 20 is an example of a “second substrate”.

#Mounted on the carriage 5 is a recording head 21, which may be an ink jet or other type of recording head. The carriage motor 40 drives the carriage 5 so as to reciprocate along a carriage guide 6. When the carriage 5 reciprocates, the recording head 21 mounted on the carriage 5 also reciprocates relative to a print medium.

#The main substrate 10 is mounted in the image forming apparatus 1 separately from the carriage 5. Thus, the main substrate 10 is stationary even when the carriage 5 moves. The carriage substrate 20 is mounted in the carriage 5 together with the recording head 21. The cable 30 couples the main substrate 10 to the carriage substrate 20. Examples of the cable 30 include, but are not limited to, a flexible flat cable, a flexible printed circuit (FPC) board, a universal serial bus (USB) cable, a local area network (LAN) cable, and other types of metal cables.