Liquid discharger including a head, a cap, a belt, and a belt cleaner
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorsKeitaroh Sakai, Toshitaka Osanai, Nobuyuki Akaishi, Shigeru Morinaga
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A liquid discharger includes a head to discharge liquid droplets, a cap to cover a nozzle face of the head; a cap mover to move the cap to a capping position at which the cap faces the nozzle face of the head or to move the cap to an evacuation position at which the cap does not face the nozzle face of the head. Further, there is a belt arranged to face and clean the cap at the evacuation position, the belt having a width and length enough to cover whole area of a rim of the cap; a conveyer to drive the belt, and a belt cleaner which faces the belt to clean the belt.
Claims12
A liquid discharger, comprising:
- a head to discharge liquid droplets;
- a cap to cover a nozzle face of the head;
- a cap mover to move the cap to a capping position at which the cap faces the nozzle face of the head or to move the cap to an evacuation position at which the cap does not face the nozzle face of the head;
- a belt which faces and cleans the cap at the evacuation position, the belt having a width and length to at least cover an entire rim of the cap;
- a conveyer to drive the belt;
- and
- a belt cleaner which faces the belt to clean the belt.
The liquid discharger as claimed in claim wherein:
- the cap mover moves the cap laterally to the capping position or to the evacuation position, and
- the cap mover moves the cap vertically until the rim of the cap contacts the belt when the cap is positioned at the evacuation position.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.