Ink jet printer

Abstract

An ink jet printer including an optical detector attached to a carriage on which a head chip is mounted, and one or more detected parts that can be detected by the detector formed on sides of ink cartridges placed in an ink cartridge holder. Each of the detected parts may be implemented as a right-angle prism. The one or more detected parts are operable to detect the presence or absence of ink and the corresponding ink cartridge being placed, among other features. Since the common optical detector and the one or more detected parts can detect a plurality of pieces of information, the ink jet printer is extremely advantageous for cost reduction and miniaturization as compared with the case where dedicated detection mechanisms are provided in a one-to-one correspondence with pieces of information to be detected as in a related art.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.