Method and system for intelligent drying in cut-sheet aqueous ink jet printing systems

A system for facilitating drying of media in a high-speed digital printer, said system comprising:

• a high-speed digital printer that renders a series of test media at an increasingly higher ink loading with an ink amount as a part of a calibration sequence, said high-speed digital printer including a digital printing press that includes a transport, a sheet feed module, a print head and ink module, a production stacker and a dryer module, said dryer module comprising a plurality of dryers that dry media including said test media, and said print head and ink module implemented in a print zone that includes a print head array and a group of associated print heads and inks of different colors;
• at least one media sensor that monitors a moisture content of said test media at each exit of each of said plurality of dryers to determine data indicative of a threshold at which said dryer module is no longer able to effectively dry said test media;
• a controller that controls operations of said at least one media sensor and a power control of said high-speed digital printer and print zones within the high-speed digital printer, wherein said at least one media sensor is operatively connected to said controller;
• and
• wherein said data is fed to a marking engine and/or an image path of said high-speed digital printer to generate in-situ a linearization profile, wherein said linearization profile includes ink volume limiting linearization data that is used to ensure that media exiting said dryer module are dry, wherein said calibration sequence progressively puts down more ink on said test media until said at least one media sensor communicates that the dryer module is unable to dry said test media, which fixes a maximum ink amount with respect to said test media such that said ink amount is then backed down from said maximum ink amount to optimize an image quality via the linearization profile.

A system for facilitating drying of media in a high-speed digital printer, said system comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-usable medium embodying computer program code, said computer-usable medium capable of communicating with said at least one processor, said computer program code comprising instructions executable by said at least one processor and configured for:
• rendering via a high-speed digital printer, a series of test media at an increasingly higher ink loading with an ink amount as a part of a calibration sequence, said high-speed digital printer comprising a digital printing press that includes a transport, a sheet feed module, a print head and ink module, a production stacker and a dryer module, said dryer module comprising a plurality of dryers that dry media including said test media, and said print head and ink module implemented in a print zone that includes a print head array and a group of associated print heads and inks of different colors;
• monitoring a moisture content of said test media with at least one media sensor at each exit of each of said plurality of dryers to determine data indicative of a threshold at which said dryer module is no longer able to effectively dry said test media;
• and
• feeding said data to a marking engine and/or an image path of said high-speed digital printer to generate in-situ a linearization profile, wherein said linearization profile includes ink volume limiting linearization data that is used to ensure that media exiting said dryer module are dry, wherein said calibration sequence progressively puts down more ink on said test media until said at least one media sensor communicates that the dryer module is unable to dry said test media, which fixes a maximum ink amount with respect to said test media such that said ink amount is then backed down from said maximum ink amount to optimize an image quality via the linearization profile.