Ink system characteristic identification
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Company
InventorsPatrick J. Therien, Wen-Li Su
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ink drop detector includes a sensing target which is imparted with an electrical stimulus when struck by at least one ink drop burst which has been ejected from an ink drop generator. The detector also includes electronics coupled to the sensing target which characterize the electrical stimulus in terms of a mathematical phase. Methods for analyzing ink ejected from an ink drop generator, and a method for optimizing ink drop generator firing frequency are also provided.
Claims55
An ink drop detector, comprising:
- a sensing target which is imparted with an electrical stimulus when struck by at least one ink drop burst which has been ejected from an ink drop generator;
- and
- electronics coupled to the sensing target which characterize the electrical stimulus in terms of a mathematical phase.
A method for analyzing ink ejected from an ink drop generator, comprising:
- generating an electrical stimulus on an ink drop detector target by firing at least one ink droplet onto the target;
- calculating a mathematical phase based on the electrical stimulus;
- and
- determining an ink system characteristic based on the mathematical phase.
A method for analyzing ink ejected from an ink drop generator, comprising:
- generating an electrical stimulus on an ink drop detector target by firing at least one ink droplet onto the target;
- calculating a mathematical phase based on the electrical stimulus;
- calculating a mathematical vector based on the electrical stimulus;
- determining an ink system characteristic based on both the mathematical phase and the mathematical vector.
A method for optimizing ink drop generator firing frequency, comprising:
- generating a series of electrical stimuli by firing a series of ink droplets or a series of ink drop bursts onto an electrostatic drop detector target at a known firing frequency;
- calculating a mathematical phase for each electrical stimulus;
- calculating a mathematical vector for each electrical stimulus;
- determining a statistical ink drop weight for ink drops fired at the known firing frequency based on the mathematical phase and mathematical vector associated with each stimulus;
- storing the statistical ink drop weight with corresponding known firing frequency in a dataset for further examination;
- changing the known firing frequency to a different known firing frequency;
- repeating the preceding steps until a desired firing frequency range is covered;
- examining the stored dataset comprising pairs of ink drop weights and known firing frequencies to determine a pivotal firing frequency before which the ink drop weight starts to decline enough to affect image quality.
- setting the firing frequency to the pivotal firing frequency.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.