Adaptive incremental printing that maximizes throughput by data shift to print with physically unaligned nozzles

Abstract

One aspect of the invention checks mechanical misalignment of plural pens and shifts data to allow for at least part of misalignment—and automatically prints images with the shifted data. If pens are aligned within a dot row then preferably the image prints without data shift. In one other preference, the pens print respective ink types; in this regard a particular preference is that the inks include plural colors, or alternatively plural dilutions. The invention is particularly beneficial in printing on a particular printing medium that is insensitive to relative timing of deposition of ink types; in this case an ideal print medium is plain paper. In some such situations the data shift best compensates for only part of misalignment, and pen-nozzle selections for the rest. In other situations the shifting step best compensates for all the misalignment. In another aspect, the invention extends marking element life and thereby printhead life by distributing usage over a maximum number of elements. This is accomplished by a system that checks misalignment and shifts data, as above. Alternative preferences for finding alignment include data encoded on pens and a reader of the encoded data; or a system that uses the pens to print a test pattern and reads it to find alignment. A hardware aspect of the invention includes parts of a processor programmed to check alignment and print with essentially all nozzles, taking alignment into account.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.