Card cleaning mechanism, card cleaning method and card printing apparatus

A card cleaning method comprising the steps of:

• an operation position moving process of moving a first card cleaning member to an operating position in a card conveyance path to contact a card being conveyed;
• a first cleaning process where the first card cleaning member cleans a surface of the card by contacting the card being conveyed in the card conveyance path;
• a second cleaning process where the second card cleaning member cleans a surface of the first card cleaning member by contacting the first card cleaning member positioned at the operating position;
• a card detection process where the card being conveyed is detected after the first and the second cleaning processes;
• and
• a retreating process where the first card cleaning member is moved to a retreated position separated from the card conveyance path using the detection of the card in the card detection process as a trigger,
• wherein each process is repeated for each card being conveyed over the card conveyance path.