Ink jet printer
AssigneeFujitsu Limited
InventorHiroshi Nou
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ink jet printer comprises a color head having a plurality of nozzles arranged on a head carrier, each of the plurality of nozzles injecting color ink particles by the drive of a piezoelectric element; and a monochrome head having a plurality of nozzles arranged the head carrier, each of the plurality of nozzles injecting monochrome ink particles by the drive of a piezoelectric element. Within a single scanning of the head carrier, a control unit switches the printing mode between a color printing mode by the color head and a monochrome printing mode by the monochrome head, to thereby provide a control of printing. For the color-printing mode, a multivalued intensity mode is set, and for the monochrome-printing mode, a high-resolution mode is set, where the resolution of the monochrome head is integer times the resolution of the color head.
Claims21
An ink jet printer comprising:
- a color head having a plurality of nozzles arranged on a head carrier, each of the plurality of nozzles injecting color ink particles by the drive of a piezoelectric element;
- and
- a monochrome head having a plurality of nozzles arranged the head carrier, each of the plurality of nozzles injecting monochrome ink particles by the drive of a piezoelectric element;
- wherein
- the ink jet printer comprises a control unit which, within a single scanning of the head carrier, switches the printing mode between a color printing mode by the color head and a monochrome printing mode by the monochrome head, to thereby provide a control of printing,
- wherein the control unit includes a color drive waveform generation unit to drive the color head and a monochrome drive waveform generation unit to drive the monochrome head in which the color drive waveform generation unit and the monochrome drive waveform generation unit are independent units that may operate simultaneously.
An ink jet printer comprising:
- a color head having a plurality of nozzles arranged on a head carrier, each of the plurality of nozzles injecting color ink particles by the drive of a piezoelectric element;
- and
- a monochrome head having a plurality of nozzles arranged the head carrier, each of the plurality of nozzles injecting monochrome ink particles by the drive of a piezoelectric element;
- wherein
- the ink jet printer comprises a control unit which, within a single scanning of the head carrier, switches the printing mode between a color printing mode by the color head and a monochrome printing mode by the monochrome head, to thereby provide a control of printing,
- wherein when color data and monochrome data are intermingled, said control unit prepares color data for a single scanning operation including efficient data, corresponding to colored portions and inefficient data corresponding in non-colored portions, as well as monochrome data for a single scanning operation, including efficient data corresponding to monochrome portions and inefficient data corresponding to non-monochrome portions,
- wherein said control unit creates a color drive signal and a monochrome drive signal at the same time and in parallel in synchronism, with the scanning operation of the head carrier,
- wherein said control unit selects the color drive waveform signal to drive the color head when the color data is efficient data, but does not select the color drive signal to stop the drive of the color head when the color data are inefficient data,
- wherein said control unit selects the monochrome drive waveform signal to drive the monochrome head when the monochrome data is efficient data, but does not select the monochrome drive signal to stop the drive of the monochrome head when the monochrome data is inefficient data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.