Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus comprising:

• a recording head including a plurality of heads, each of the heads including a plurality of arranged nozzles to discharge a droplet, wherein the plurality of heads are arranged in a zigzag formation with respect to a nozzle array direction;
• a conveyer belt with a plurality of suction holes to convey a printing medium in a direction intersecting a head array direction;
• a suction unit to suction the printing medium through the plurality of suction holes of the conveyer belt;
• and
• a control unit to control a blank discharging operation to discharge a blank discharging droplet not contributing to image forming from the nozzles when there is no printing medium on the conveyer belt;
• wherein a plurality of suction hole arrays, each of the suction hole arrays including the plurality of suction holes arranged in the head array direction, are arranged at a predetermined interval;
• wherein at least one of the plurality of suction hole arrays is a reference suction hole array including the suction hole to pass a position facing the nozzle of an end of a nozzle array and the nozzle in an overlapping part of two heads in the nozzle array direction;
• and
• wherein the control unit performs a control to make each nozzle in the recording head discharge the blank discharging droplet toward the suction holes, using the reference suction hole array as a standard.