Droplet ejecting apparatus and droplet ejecting method

A droplet ejecting apparatus which records dots on a medium comprising:

• an ejecting unit which ejects droplets;
• and
• a control unit which controls
• a printing operation in which dots are recorded on the medium by performing multipass recording in which recording of dots which are located in one main scanning line which goes along a main scanning direction is completed in a recording operation in the main scanning direction of N times (N is an integer of 2 or greater) by executing the recording operation in the main scanning direction in which dots are recorded by ejecting the droplets along the main scanning direction of the medium, and a sub-scanning operation in which the medium and the ejecting unit are relatively moved in a sub-scanning direction which intersects the main scanning direction, and
• a maintenance operation in which maintenance with respect to the ejecting unit is performed,
• wherein the control unit performs a control so that a predetermined number equal to at least recording operations in the main scanning direction of (N−1) times is performed between the previous maintenance operation and the subsequent maintenance operation when performing maintenance operations of a plurality of times,
• wherein a time for interrupting the printing operation due to the maintenance process of one time is limited to be shorter than an allowed time,
• wherein a maintenance process of which a time needed for completion is equal to or longer than the allowed time is distributed into maintenance operations of a plurality of times which are equal to or shorter than the allowed time.