Printing system with phase shift printing to reduce peak power consumption

Abstract

In a printing system with multiple printheads, a spot of ink is created on a recording medium using up to N drops of ink fired from an ejector of one of the printheads. Each printhead has an array of ejectors. A single power supply drives the ejectors of the multiple printheads. Each of the printheads delivers a single color such as cyan, magenta, yellow, or black. A memory, which is coupled to the multiple printheads, records a printfile. Values in the printfile record channel values. Each channel value specifies how many drops of ink to deliver onto the recording medium over a spot cycle. The spot cycles of the multiple printheads, which consist of one to N actuation intervals, are desynchronized by operating the spot cycles out of phase with each other. The spot cycles of two printheads, for example, are desynchronized by beginning the spot cycle of one printhead a non-multiple of N drops prior to beginning the spot cycle of the other printhead. Desynchronizing the spot cycles of the printheads reduces the peak power requirements of the printheads by lowering the peak average consumption during any actuation interval of a spot cycle of the acoustic printing system.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.