Printing apparatus and method for estimating amount of ink
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsHirokazu Tanaka, Hidehiko Kanda, Atsushi Sakamoto, Jiro Moriyama
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Abstract
The present invention provides a printing apparatus which is capable of estimate an amount of remaining ink with high accuracy by using ejection of ink from a printing head while restraining a consumption of ink during the estimation of the remaining ink amount, and also provides a method for estimating an amount of ink. An amount of ink ejected per unit time during the ink ejection for estimation of the remaining ink amount is set to be larger than an amount of ink ejected per unit time during printing.
Claims11
A printing apparatus for performing printing on a printing medium by ejecting ink supplied by an ink tank from ejection openings of a printing head, comprising:
- an acquisition unit that acquires a temperature change of the printing head between before and after ejection of ink not contributing to printing;
- and
- an estimation unit that estimates a remaining ink amount based on the acquired temperature change of the printing head, wherein
- an amount of ink ejected per unit time during the ejection of ink not contributing to printing is larger than an amount of ink ejected per unit time during the printing.
An estimation method of an ink amount, in a printing apparatus for performing printing on a printing medium by ejecting ink supplied by an ink tank from ejection openings of a printing head, for estimating an amount of ink available for supply to the ejection openings, the method comprising:
- an acquisition process for acquiring a temperature change of the printing head between before and after the ejection of ink not contributing to printing;
- and
- an estimation process for estimating a remaining ink amount on the basis of the temperature change of the printing head which is acquired in said acquisition process, and wherein
- an amount of ink ejected per unit time during the ejection of ink not contributing to printing is larger than an amount of ink ejected per unit time during the printing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.