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US 8,757,745 B2Granted
Printing apparatus
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorKanto Kurasawa
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The printing apparatus includes: a print unit to print on a medium using a pigment ink and a dye ink; a stir mechanism capable of stirring at least the pigment ink; and a control unit to perform control to make the duration of the stirring operation executed prior to starting the printing operation longer when the pigment ink is included in the ink to be used in the printing operation than when it is not.
Claims7
A printing apparatus comprising:
- a print head having pigment ejection openings for ejecting a pigment ink and dye ejection openings for ejecting a dye ink;
- a pigment ink tank configured to contain pigment ink to be supplied to the print head;
- a stir unit configured to perform a stirring operation for stirring pigment ink in the pigment ink tank, wherein ink is not ejected during the stirring operation;
- a determining unit configured to determine whether the print head ejects pigment ink in a printing operation based on image data to be printed;
- and
- a control unit responsive to the determination by the determining unit of whether the print head ejects pigment ink in the printing operation, the control unit being configured to cause the stir unit to perform the stirring operation before the printing operation when the print head ejects pigment ink in the printing operation, and being configured to cause the print head to perform the printing operation without the stirring operation when the print head does not eject pigment ink in the printing operation.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.