Image forming method with renewal of toner residual amount
AssigneesKabushiki Kaisha Toshiba, Toshiba Tec Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorMasaaki Wakamatsu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
When copying control (copying/printing job) is finished, the main CPU checks whether the scanner control is being executed in the scanner portion. If the scanner control is not being executed, the main CPU checks whether there is any scanner control executing request. If there is no scanner control executing request, the main CPU locks a scanner control resource, reads out a count value of a toner residual amount stored in a non-volatile RAM, renews the control information of EEPROM of the toner cartridge through an interface, releases the lock of the scanner control resource and finishes the copying operation.
Claims14
An image forming method for an image forming device, the method comprising:
- storing toner amount information of a toner cartridge at a time when the power of the image forming device is turned on;
- renewing the toner amount information stored in a storage section within the toner cartridge;
- and
- inhibiting other processing from interrupting in the renewing from a start time of information renewal processing of the storage section until an end time of the information renewal processing.
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- an image forming mechanism configured to form an image with printing data provided from a communication function or a receiving device;
- a storage section with a toner cartridge configured to store toner amount information of the toner cartridge;
- a used toner amount information counter configured to count used toner amount information with the image forming of the image forming mechanism;
- and
- a toner amount information renew mechanism configured to renew toner amount information stored in the storage section,
- the toner amount information renew mechanism further configured to inhibit other processing from interrupting the toner amount information renew mechanism from a start time of information renewal processing of the storage section until an end time of the information renewal processing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.