Liquid ejection apparatus

Abstract

The liquid ejection apparatus comprises: a liquid ejection head including: a plurality of ejection elements arranged in a row direction coinciding with a main scanning direction and in a column direction which is substantially parallel to a sub-scanning direction, each of the ejection elements having a nozzle which ejects liquid onto an ejection receiving medium and having a piezoelectric element which applies an ejection force to the liquid to be ejected from the nozzle, the ejection elements forming groups of the ejection elements, each of the groups of the ejection elements being constituted by the ejection elements arranged in the column direction; and a plurality of heating elements which heat the liquid to be ejected from the nozzles and are arranged in the row direction correspondingly to the groups of the ejection elements, each of the heating elements having a length in the column direction substantially equal to or greater than a length of each of the groups of the ejection elements; a movement device which moves the ejection receiving medium in the sub-scanning direction relatively to the liquid ejection head, by moving at least one of the ejection receiving medium and the liquid ejection head; a heating element drive device which applies a heating drive signal to each of the heating elements; a prediction device which predicts a number of the ejection elements to be driven in each of the groups of the ejection elements, according to ejection data; and a heating control device which varies and controls an amount of heat generated by each of the heating elements, according to the number of the ejection elements to be driven in each of the groups of the ejection elements, as predicted by the prediction device.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.