Image recording apparatus
AssigneeFUJIFILM Corporation
InventorToshiya Kojima
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An ink jet printer has a carriage equipped with a recording head. The carriage is disposed downstream in a feeding direction of a recording medium. The carriage has an optical sensor for measuring dirt on a supply roller. When the supply roller is dirty, a cleaning operation is started to rotate the supply roller as being pressed onto a separation pad. The dirt on the supply roller is measured with the optical sensor, and the cleaning operation lasts until the dirt is removed from the supply roller.
Claims10
An image recording apparatus for recording an image on a sheet-like recording medium using a recording head located to a recording position, comprising:
- a supply roller for feeding said recording medium to said recording position;
- a cleaning member for removing dirt from a peripheral surface of said supply roller;
- a carriage holding said recording head, and moving back and forth in a main scanning direction orthogonal to a feeding direction of said recording medium;
- a dirt measuring sensor attached to said carriage, and for measuring dirt on said peripheral surface of said supply roller;
- and
- a cleaning controller for rotating said supply roller as being pressed onto said cleaning member and monitoring said dirt with said dirt measuring sensor during a cleaning operation, and for stopping said supply roller to finish said cleaning operation when said dirt is removed.
An image recording apparatus for recording an image on a sheet-like recording medium using a recording head located to a recording position, comprising:
- a supply roller for feeding said recording medium to said recording position;
- a cleaning member for making contact with said supply roller to remove dirt from a peripheral surface thereof during a cleaning operation of said supply roller;
- a memory storing information about how much dirt said supply roller comes to have in feeding a recording medium, according to the types of recording media;
- a dirt measuring sensor for measuring dirt on said supply roller;
- an input device for entering the number of said recording media to be recorded serially;
- an estimator for estimating degree of dirt with reference to said information in said memory and based on a measurement result of said dirt measuring sensor, the type of recording medium and said number of recording media to be recorded;
- and
- a third notification device for notifying that said cleaning operation needs to be performed in advance of an image recording operation in the event that an estimated degree of dirt is on or above a predetermined threshold value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.