US 8,007,071 B2 · Image forming apparatus and information recording medium

Abstract

An image forming apparatus includes: a liquid tank which retains a liquid; a liquid jetting head connected to the liquid tank and having a nozzle for jetting the liquid; a carriage on which the liquid tank and the liquid jetting head are provided; a recovery mechanism which recovers the liquid jetting head; a memory which retains predetermined history information; and a controller which controls the recovery mechanism based on the history information. The recovery mechanism selectively executes a first recovery operation for discharging air from the liquid tank and a second recovery operation for discharging air from the liquid tank and for discharging the liquid from the nozzle, and the controller controls the recovery mechanism to perform the first recovery operation if the history information in the memory includes an abnormality when a power of the image forming apparatus is switched ON.

Claims12

Dependent claims

An image forming apparatus which forms an image on an image forming medium, comprising:

a liquid tank which stores liquid for forming an image;
a liquid jetting head which is connected to the liquid tank and has a nozzle for jetting the liquid supplied from the liquid tank onto the image forming medium;
a carriage on which the liquid tank and the liquid jetting head are provided;
a recovery mechanism which recovers a liquid jetting function, for jetting the liquid, of the liquid jetting head;
a memory which retains predetermined history information;
and
a controller which controls the recovery mechanism based on the history information retained by the memory,
wherein the recovery mechanism selectively executes two recovery operations of a first recovery operation for discharging air from the liquid tank and a second recovery operation for discharging air from the liquid tank and for discharging the liquid from the nozzle, as an operation for recovering the liquid jetting function of the liquid jetting head, and
the controller controls the recovery mechanism to perform the first recovery operation in a case that the history information retained in the memory includes an abnormality when a power supply of the image forming apparatus is switched ON.

6 more elements

A non-transitory information recording medium which is readable by a computer and which includes a computer program recorded on the information recording medium, the computer program causes the computer to:

make a judgment with respect to an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus including:
a liquid tank which retains an image forming liquid;
a liquid jetting head which is connected to the liquid tank and has a nozzle for jetting the liquid supplied from the liquid tank onto an image forming medium;
a carriage on which the liquid tank and the liquid jetting head are provided;
a recovery mechanism which recovers a liquid jetting function for jetting the liquid of the liquid jetting head;
and a memory which retains predetermined history information, the judgment being about whether the history information retained in the memory includes an abnormality when a power supply of the image forming apparatus is switched ON;
and
control the recovery mechanism to discharge air from the liquid tank when the image forming apparatus judges that the history information includes an abnormality.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Image forming apparatus and information recording medium

Life of this patent

Image forming apparatus and information recording medium

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims12