Toner refill control of image forming apparatus
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorMok Hwa LIM
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image forming apparatus and method for determining whether a toner refill apparatus is available are provided. The image forming apparatus includes a print engine to carry out a print job using a toner from a toner cartridge, a communication apparatus to communicate with a memory chip attached to a toner refill apparatus for refilling a toner in the toner cartridge, and a processor to identify whether the toner refill apparatus is available based on information stored in the memory chip of the toner refill apparatus.
Claims15
An image forming apparatus, comprising:
- a print engine to carry out a print job using a toner from a toner cartridge;
- a communication apparatus to communicate with a memory chip attached to a toner refill apparatus for refilling a toner in the toner cartridge;
- and
- a processor to identify whether the toner refill apparatus is available based on information stored in the memory chip of the toner refill apparatus.
A communication method of an image forming apparatus, the method comprising:
- receiving information stored in a memory chip attached to a toner refill apparatus for refilling a toner in a toner cartridge;
- identifying whether the toner refill apparatus is available using the received information;
- and
- based on identifying that the toner refill apparatus is available, storing at least one of serial information, start information, or refill time information of the toner cartridge in the memory chip.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.