Method for measurement of reflectance profiles of image surfaces
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorsJulianna Lin, Aaron M. Burry
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system of measuring the bare belt signature of a surface that does not require the use of extra print jobs, or extra belt cycles, during the printing of the actual print job. Instead, the inter-document zone and other “toner-free” areas within the test job itself are used to extract an estimate of the bare belt signature. More specifically, prior knowledge of the job content and of the location of the area between image pitches is used to identify areas of the belt that should be toner-free. These areas are then treated as “bare belt” segments, and the sensor signal for these areas are extracted, aligned according to their spatial location along the belt, and then averaged to produce a final estimate of the bare belt signature.
Claims29
In printing a document job, a method of measuring a bare surface signature of a surface within a print engine including the steps of:
- defining image colorant free zones on the surface,
- determining the location of the image colorant free zones along the surface,
- providing image colorant density signals along the surface,
- extracting the image colorant density signals of the image colorant free zones along the surface, and
- providing the bare belt signature of the image colorant free zones in response to the image colorant density signals of the image colorant free zones.
A method for monitoring image colorant characteristics in a printing system including the steps of:
- collecting image colorant density data of a surface from a sensor,
- identifying image colorant free areas along the surface,
- extracting values from the sensor data for the image colorant free areas, and
- estimating an image colorant signal from the sensor data in accordance with the values from the image colorant free areas.
A system for monitoring image colorant on an imaging surface comprising:
- a page sync signal for recording the beginning of an image on the imaging surface,
- a sensor for identifying data representing an image colorant free surface on the imaging surface in response to the page sync signal, and
- means for providing an image colorant free surface signature from the sensor data.
A method of determining a bare surface signature of a surface in a printing system comprising the steps of:
- defining image colorant free areas of the document job,
- sensing image colorant density data from the surface,
- extracting data for the image colorant free area from the image colorant density data, and
- estimating a bare surface signature from the data from the image colorant free areas.
A method of sensing image colorant density along a belt in a document print job comprising:
- initiating the document print job,
- providing a page sync signal to record the beginning of an image on the belt,
- identifying sensor data representing a bare surface on the belt in response to the page sync signal, and
- providing a bare surface signature from the sensor data representing a bare surface on the belt.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.