Defective Printer Nozzle Compensation Control
AssigneeSeiko Epson Corporation
InventorYuko Yamamoto
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Ink ejection problems of black ink nozzles are compensated for by forming dots by mixing cyan, magenta and yellow inks without reducing print quality. When a nozzle that discharges black ink becomes unable to properly eject ink, cyan, magenta, and yellow inks are ejected from respective nozzles to the discharge area on the recording medium to which the defective nozzle should eject ink. The volumes of the cyan, magenta and yellow inks that are ejected are set to effectively compensate for the missing black dot.
Claims16
A control method for a print control device that controls a printing device that has a printhead having a plurality of nozzles that can individually eject black ink and plural other colors of ink onto a recording medium based on print data, and prints by compensating for a defective nozzle when any of the plurality of nozzles that is configured to eject black ink is detected to be a defective nozzle that cannot eject ink normally, the control method comprising:
- executing a defective nozzle compensation process that ejects ink of at least one of the plural other colors to a discharge area on the recording medium to which the defective nozzle should eject ink, and sets the discharge volume of the ink of the at least one of the plural other colors based on the volume of black ink that should be ejected by the defective nozzle to the discharge area and the volume of ink of the at least one of the plural other colors that is determined by the print control device to be necessary to compensate for the black ink that is not ejected to the discharge area.
A printing device comprising:
- a printhead having a plurality of nozzles configured to eject black ink and plural other colors of ink;
- and
- a control unit that selectively causes the plurality of nozzles to eject black ink and the plural other colors of ink to a recording medium based on print data;
- wherein when the control unit detects that any of the plurality of nozzles that discharges black ink is a defective nozzle that cannot eject ink normally, the control unit causes ejection of ink of at least one of the plural other colors to the discharge area on the recording medium to which the defective nozzle should eject ink, and sets the discharge volume of the ink of the at least one of the plural other colors based on the volume of black ink that should be ejected by the defective nozzle to the discharge area and the volume of ink of the at least one of the plural other colors that is determined by the control unit to be necessary to compensate for the black ink that is not ejected to the discharge area.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.