JP2551557B2 - Ink jet recording device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial application] The present invention is a cap which is provided so as to be freely attached to and detached from a carriage having a recording head mounted thereon, and which closes the recording head and locks the recording head in the contact state. The present invention relates to a cap device including the ink jet recording device.

[Prior Art] In the conventional ink jet cap device, when the orifice surface of the recording head is sealed by the cap, at the same time as the sealing operation, the carriage equipped with the recording head is locked by the locking member of the cap device. There is something that keeps immobile. In this way, in order for the locking member of the cap device to lock the carriage,
The cap device has a large stroke for moving in and out of the recording head.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In such an ink jet cap device, if the power of the recording device is turned off while the cap is operating so as to approach the carriage, the cap of the cap device is locked. The member operates so as to approach the carriage as it is. Then, when the power is turned on next time, the positions of the cap and the lock member are memorized in the state when the power is turned off, and it is detected that they are electrically separated from the recording head and the carriage, respectively. That is, the cap blocks the recording head and the locking member locks the carriage. Thus, although it is judged electrically that the cap and the lock member are separated from the recording head and the carriage, the running of the carriage is blocked by the lock member, resulting in an error condition, and the recording device is in trouble. Will be topped up. Also, in detecting the position of the cap, if an undefined state is provided between the state where the cap is sufficiently separated from the recording head and the state where the recording head is closed, this undefined state is resolved when the power is turned on. Otherwise, inconvenience will occur in running the carriage.

Further, even in a recording apparatus having a complicated and expensive power-off sequence, if the power outlet is suddenly unplugged, the same problem as described above will occur.

Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and eliminates the malfunction of a lock member for cam-driven ink jet head caps and a carriage having the ink jet heads immobile. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an ink jet recording apparatus which can effectively prevent the carriage, which is caused by the collision between the cap and the ink jet head, from being unnecessarily locked by the locking member.

[Means for Solving Problems] In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, according to the present invention, a carriage carrying an ink jet head and traveling,
A cap for capping the ink jet head, a first position for allowing the carriage to travel, and a cap for carrying out the capping of the ink jet head and a second position for locking the carriage. It comprises a cam for following and a detecting means for electrically detecting whether or not the cap is in the first position, and the ink jet device is turned on to detect the detecting means. When it is detected that the cap is not at the first position, the cam moves the cap to the first position.

[Operation] With the above configuration, when the cam driven cap and the lock member are separated from the ink head when the power of the ink jet device is turned on, the first position for allowing the carriage to travel by the detecting means is set. It electrically detects and acts to eliminate unstable operating conditions of the cap and lock members.

[Embodiment] An embodiment in which an embodiment of the cap device according to the present invention is applied to an ink jet recording device will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

As shown in FIG. 1, this ink jet recording apparatus 10
The carriage 14 is slidably guided in parallel with the platen 16 by a pair of guide rails 12a and 12b. The carriage 14 has a recording head 1 having an orifice 18a for ejecting ink opened on the surface facing the platen 16.
Eight is installed. Further, on one side of the carriage 14, when the carriage 14 is returned to the home position, the home position sensor 20 is turned on to detect that the carriage 14 is in the home position. The pin 22 is projected.

An ink jet cap device 24 as a cap device for locking the carriage 14 to the home position and closing the recording head 18 mounted on the carriage 14 is provided opposite to the carriage 14 in the home position. .

The ink jet cap device 24 has a base 26 as shown in FIG. A guide hole 30 is formed on the upper surface of the base 26 so as to guide the cap holder 28 so that the cap holder 28 can slide in and out of contact with the carriage 14.

A cap 32 that can close the recording head 18 is provided on a side surface of the cap holder 28 that faces the recording head 18. With the cap holder 28 in proximity to the recording head 18 and the cap 32 in contact with the recording head 18, the recording head 18
Is closed by the cap 32.

On the other hand, the cap holder 28 provided with this cap 32
A pair of ridges 34a, 34b functioning as a carriage lock member are provided on both side edges of the side surface of the ridge. Double ridges 34a, 3
4b is a state in which the carriage 32 is brought so as to close the recording head 18, and as shown in FIG. 3, the carriage 14 is held so as to be sandwiched from both sides, and the movement of the carriage 14 is locked. ing. Carriage like this
By locking 14 the ink can be prevented from leaking from the recording head 18 and the recording head 18 can be reliably fixed when the recording device 10 is handled during transportation or storage.

Next, the drive mechanism of the cap device 24 will be described.

The cap holder 28 is constantly urged in a direction closer to the recording head 18 by a coil spring 36 provided on the back surface of the cap holder 28. A driven pin 38 is projectingly provided on one side surface of the cap holder 28.

The tip of the driven pin 38 is inserted into a cam groove 40 described later. On the other hand, a driven gear 42 is rotatably attached to a side wall of the base 26 via a shaft 42a so as to face one side of the cap holder 28. On the surface of the driven gear 42 facing the cap holder 28, the above-mentioned cam groove 40 is formed. This cam groove 40 is formed in a circular shape, and the driven gear
It is arranged eccentrically from the center of rotation of 42. still,
The driven pin 38 contacts the circumferential surface of the cam groove 40 by the biasing force of the coil spring 35, and the stop position of the cap holder 28 is defined at this contact position.

A driven gear 44 having a small diameter meshes with the driven gear 42. The drive gear 44 is a drive shaft 46 of a drive motor 46.
It is fixed coaxially to a.

Since the drive mechanism is configured in this way, the driven gear 42 rotates in response to the drive of the drive motor 46, and as a result,
The distance of the portion of the peripheral surface of the cam groove 40 with which the driven pin 38 is in contact from the rotation center of the driven gear 42 changes. In this way, the cap holder 28 is brought into contact with and separated from the carriage 14 and the recording head 18.

That is, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 4, when the portion of the peripheral surface of the cam groove 40 in contact with the driven pin 38 is at the closest position due to the rotation center of the driven gear 42, the driven pin is 38 is pushed back by the circumferential surface of the cam groove 40 against the biasing force of the coil spring 36, and accordingly, the cap holder 28 is held at the first position separated from the carriage 14 and the recording head 18. Positioning the cap holder 28 at this first position allows the carriage 14 to travel freely without being hindered by the cap holder 28.

On the other hand, as shown in FIGS. 3 and 5, the driven gear 42 rotates 180 degrees from the first position, and the peripheral portion of the cam groove 40 in contact with the driven pin 38 is the driven gear 42. When the driven pin 38 is located farthest from the center of rotation, the driven pin 38 is pushed by the biasing force of the coil spring 36 so as to come into contact with the circumferential surface of the cam groove 40, and accordingly, the cap holder 28 is engaged with the carriage 14. Are brought to a second position where they meet. When the cap holder 28 is located at the second position, the carriage 14 is engaged with the cap holder 28 to lock the traveling, and the recording head 18 is closed by the cap 32.

In addition, the above-mentioned first position depends on the shape of the cam groove 40.
Even if the driven gear 42 is rotated in a slight range from the position shown in FIG. 4, the driven gear 42 is not substantially moved in the lateral direction and is held in the first position.

As shown in FIGS. 1 and 3, the driven gear 42 is provided with a detecting mechanism 48 for detecting the position of the cap holder 28 based on the rotational position of the driven gear 42. The detection mechanism 48 includes an eccentric cam disk 48a that is eccentrically attached to the shaft 42a of the driven gear 42, and a detection switch 48b that is turned on and off by the large diameter portion of the eccentric cam disk 48a.
As shown in FIG. 1, the large diameter portion of the eccentric cam disk 48 is electrically connected to the detection mechanism 48 when the detection switch 48b is off and the cap holder 28 is in the first position in which the cap holder 28 is separated. When it is turned on, it is electrically detected to be in the second position.

Particularly, according to this embodiment, as shown in FIG.
Even if the driven gear 42 rotates, the detection switch 48b is turned on by the eccentric cam disk 48a rotated by the rotation of the driven gear 42 while the cap holder 28 is substantially held in the first position. Thus, the detection mechanism 48 is configured.

That is, the detection mechanism 48 sets the range for electrically detecting that the cap holder 28 is at the first position within a range narrower than the range where the cap holder 28 is physically at the first position. I am trying.

The operation of the recording device 10 configured as described above will be described below.

First, it is assumed that while the driven gear 42 is rotating and the lock members 34a and 34b of the cap holder 28 are not exposed, the recording apparatus 10 is powered off once and then turned on again. In this case, if the carriage 14 is controlled so as to be immediately driven to move toward the platen 16 side, the carriage 14 is locked by the locking members 34a and 34b, so that the carriage 14 is locked.
A pulse motor (not shown) for driving the motor may cause a feeding failure such as step out, or an error state of being unable to run may occur.

Therefore, conventionally, as shown in FIG. 7, after the power is turned on, it is determined in step S1 whether or not the cap holder 28 is in the second position. When the cap holder 28 is in the second position,
At step S2, the cap holder 28 is moved to the first position. If it is determined in step S1 that the cap holder 28 is not in the second position, the cap holder 28 is temporarily moved to the second position in step S3.
Then, the cap holder 28 is moved to the first position at step S2.

By controlling the drive of the cap holder 28 in this way, it is possible to avoid the above-described running failure or running disabled state, but the following problems still remain. That is, if the power of the recording device 10 is turned off immediately before the carriage 14 is returned to the home position,
As shown in the figure, the recording head 18 is located on the moving path of the lock members 34a, 34b. Therefore, when the cap holder 28 is once brought to the second position when the power is turned on again, the lock members 34a and 34b directly contact the recording head 18 and damage the recording head 18. Will occur.

However, according to this embodiment, as shown in the timing chart of FIG.
When the position is other than the position, the detection mechanism 48 electrically determines that the cap holder 28 is in the second position, so that the determination range in step S1 is wide. That is, the detection switch 48b is turned on and the range for electrically detecting that it is at the first position is narrow. In this way, if the detection switch 48b of the detection mechanism 48 is turned off when the power is turned on, the carriage 14 can run without any hindrance.

When it is detected in step S1 that the cap holder 28 is not in the second position, the carriage 14 returns to the home position, the home position sensor 20 is turned on, and then the step S3 is executed. It is done like this.

As described above in detail, according to this embodiment, even if the recording apparatus is powered off in an arbitrary state, it is detected that the cap holder is electrically at the first position when the power is turned on again. Then, the carriage is always free to run, and if it is electrically in the second position, the carriage is always at the home position, so that there is no unnecessary collision between the cap and the recording head and the collision between the lock member and the carriage. This is surely prevented, and the reliability of the cap movement operation is improved.

The present invention is not limited to the configuration of the above-described embodiment and can be variously modified without departing from the scope of the present invention.

For example, in the above-described embodiment, the detection mechanism for detecting the position of the cap holder is the first one of the cap holder.
Although it has been described that only one detection switch that detects only the position of 1 is provided, two detection switches that respectively detect the first position and the second position may be provided. In this case, an indefinite region is formed between the first and second positions, and the indefinite region is electrically processed in the same manner as the second position to provide the above-described one detection switch. The same effect as can be obtained.

[Effects of the Invention] As described in detail above, according to the present invention, the malfunction of the lock member for cam driven ink jet head and the lock member for immobilizing the carriage carrying the ink jet head is eliminated. It is possible to provide an ink jet recording apparatus which can effectively prevent the cap from colliding with the ink jet head and the carriage from being unnecessarily locked by the locking member.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a top view showing a recording apparatus to which an embodiment of the capping apparatus according to the present invention is applied, with the cap holder in the first position, and FIG. 2 shows the capping apparatus shown in FIG. FIG. 3 is a perspective view showing the recording apparatus shown in FIG. 1 with the cap holder in the second position, and FIGS. 4 and 5 show the driven pin engaging the driven gear. FIG. 6 is a side view showing the first and second positions, FIG. 6 is a timing chart showing the timing when the detection mechanism detects the position of the cap holder, and FIG. 7 is a flow chart showing the drive control content of the cap holder. Chart, FIG. 8 is a top view of a recording apparatus showing conventional problems. In the figure, 10 ... Recording device, 12a, 12b ... Guide shaft, 14 ...
Carriage, 16 ... Platen, 18 ... Recording head, 18a
…… Orifuisu, 20 …… Home position sensor, 22…
… Detecting pin, 24… Ink jet cap device, 26…
… Base, 28 …… Cap holder, 30 …… Guide groove, 32
...... Caps, 34a, 34b ...... Lock members (projections), 36 ...
… Coil spring, 38… Follower pin, 40… Cam groove,
42 …… driven gear, 44 …… driving gear, 46 …… motor, 46a
...... Drive shaft, 48 …… Detection mechanism, 48a …… Eccentric cam disk, 4
8b ...... Detection switch.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A carriage for carrying an ink jet head for traveling, a cap for capping the ink jet head, a first position for allowing the carriage to travel, and a capping for the ink jet head. A cam for following the cap and a detection for electrically detecting whether the cap is in the first position between the second position that locks the carriage in an immovable state. And a cam for moving the cap to the first position when the detection device detects that the cap is not in the first position when the ink jet device is powered on. An ink jet recording apparatus, characterized in that the ink jet recording apparatus is moved to.