US 6,309,063 B1Granted

Ink-jet printer

AssigneeToshiba Tec Kabushiki Kaisha

InventorsTadao Kamano, Hiroyuki Takada, Shigeru Morino, Hitoshi Ushiogi, Kyouichi Shibata, Takashi Kashiwagi, Izumi Araki, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Hidenobu Suzuki, Hiroaki Watanabe

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Abstract

An ink-jet printer includes a sheet feed-in mechanism 60 for feeding a paper sheet, a rotary drum 10 having a peripheral surface 11 of a size larger than the paper sheet to be fed by the sheet feed-in mechanism 60, for rotating at a constant speed, a sheet holding system 20 for holding the paper sheet on the peripheral surface of the rotary drum, a print head 200 for printing an image by repeatedly ejecting ink onto the paper sheet held on the peripheral surface of the rotary drum 10 while the rotary drum 10 performs a predetermined number of rotations, a sheet separator 140 for separating the paper sheet from the peripheral surface 11 of the rotary drum, a sheet feed-out mechanism 160 for feeding out the paper sheet separated by the sheet separator 140, a control unit 111 for controlling the sheet feed-in mechanism 60, the rotary drum 10, the sheet holding system 20, the print head 200, the sheet separator 140 and the sheet feed-out mechanism 160. In particular, the control unit 111 is constructed such that the sheet holding system 20, the print head 200 and the sheet separator 140 are sequentially driven on the basis of the number of rotations of the rotary drum 10.

Claims10

Dependent claims

An ink-jet printer comprising:

a rotary drum which is rotatable at a constant speed, said rotary drum having a peripheral surface for winding up a print medium;
medium loading means disposed near said rotary drum for loading the print medium on the peripheral surface of said rotary drum;
an ink-jet print head disposed to face the peripheral surface of said rotary drum for printing an image by repeatedly ejecting ink onto the print medium on the peripheral surface of said rotary drum while the print medium is moved relative to said ink-jet print head by rotation of said rotary drum;
medium removing means disposed near said rotary drum for removing the print medium on which the image has been printed by said ink-jet print head;
and
control means for sequentially driving said medium loading means, said ink-jet print head and said medium removing means during a predetermined number of rotations of said rotary drum in a manner such that an initial complete rotation is assigned to loading of the print medium by said medium loading means without printing, a last complete rotation is assigned to removing of the print medium by said medium removing means without printing, and a remainder of the rotations is assigned to printing of the image by said ink-jet print head wherein said initial complete rotation and said last complete rotation are always performed so as to reduce positional deviation or vibration of the print medium.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.