JPH05338273A - Recording method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain a printer of a high cost performance by a method wherein printing is enabled to be performed on paper of a wide width even with an apparatus of the same width as conventionally by making a printing range of each head be different. CONSTITUTION:In a recording method wherein printing is performed with a plurality of print heads 1-4, a recording width in printing with a single head among a plurality of print heads is varied from a recording width in printing with a plurality of heads. Further, the recording width by printing with the single head is made larger than the recording width by printing with a plurality of heads. Furthermore, a printing data wherein a plurality of print heads are used is converted to a printing data wherein the single head is used, and printing is performed with a larger recording width than that when a plurality of print heads are used. Consequently, a larger recording range will be capable of being recorded even with the same recorder width as conventionally.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a recording method for printing with a plurality of heads.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In many conventional ink jet printers capable of color printing, a plurality of heads are arranged in the scanning direction to finish printing one line by one scanning. This is 1
This is an excellent method that has a faster printing speed and less color shift compared to a color dot impact printer that manually or automatically changes the ink ribbon after each scan. The operation of the color inkjet printer equipped with the print heads of four colors will be described below.

First, when a print start command is sent from the computer, the printer controller drives the carriage motor through the motor control device. When the carriage enters the print area, printing is performed at a predetermined position based on the position signal from the linear encoder, for example. Here, the print head is yellow (Yello) as shown in FIG.
w), magenta (magenta), cyan (Cya)
It is assumed that the four colors n) and black are mounted in the order shown in the figure. That is, Red is Ye
Low and Magenta, Cy is Cy
An and Mengenta, Green is Ye
7 colors can be realized by striking low and Cyan so that they overlap on the paper. The print head is of a type in which an ink droplet is ejected from an ejection port by causing a state change in the ink by using thermal energy.

[0004]

In the printer using the carriage in which a plurality of print heads are arranged in the scanning direction as described in the description of the prior art, for example, in FIG.
The carriage must be additionally scanned by the distance between the ck head and the Yellow head, which increases the width of the apparatus. This is clear when compared with the case of the monochrome printer of FIG. 7b. In other words, the conventional color printer has a drawback that it requires a larger device size to print on the same paper size as the monochrome printer and has very poor cost performance.

Therefore, in view of the above points, an object of the present invention is to provide a recording method which enables a large recording range even with the same width as the conventional apparatus.

[0006]

In order to achieve such an object, the invention of claim 1 is a recording method for performing printing by a plurality of print heads, wherein printing is performed by a single head among the plurality of print heads. It is characterized in that the recording width at the time of printing by the plural heads is different from that at the time.

The invention according to claim 2 is further characterized in that the recording width by the single head printing is larger than the recording width by the plural head printing.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, the print data using the plurality of print heads is further converted into print data using the single head, and a recording width larger than that in the case of using the plurality of print heads is provided. It is characterized by printing.

[0009]

According to the present invention, the printable range in each head scanning direction is made different so that a large print range can be achieved even with the same width as the conventional device, and a printer with extremely high cost performance is provided. it can.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

<Embodiment 1> FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the relationship between the printable range and the minimum device width of the present invention and the print head. It should be noted that this drawing is for explaining the principle, and in an actual device, the device width and the like need to be made larger than this for convenience of housing design and the like, but this is ignored because it is not the essence of the present invention. Assuming that the 4-color printable range is 8 inches, the print heads have the same shape, and the head interval is 1 inch, the printable range of each color is

[0012]

[Expression 1] 8 inches + 1 inch × 3 = 11 inches, and if printing is performed using only one head, a printable range that is 3 inches larger than the conventional color printer can be obtained. This is a conventional color printer
A4 size that can be used to feed 4 size paper vertically
This means that the paper can be fed horizontally or the A3 paper can be fed vertically. In addition, when the print range of each color is the print data as shown in Fig. 1 or by converting the print data position to this print range,

[0013]

(2) Printing of 8 inches + 1 inch × 6 = 14 inches is possible. Even in this case, the device width is the same as that of the conventional color printer. Next, the operation of the color printer that realizes the present invention will be described.

FIG. 2 shows the flow of print data sent from the host computer. The print data sent from the host such as a computer is temporarily stored in the receive buffer 6 from the interface (I / F) 5. At this time, the CPU performs printing processing of previously sent data, motor control, etc., so that data transfer from the interface 5 to the receive buffer 6 is often performed by interrupt processing or hardware. Next, the print data is taken out from the receive buffer 6 by a central processing unit (CPU) (not shown).

Data sent from a computer are usually a control code for instructing the operation of the printer and a character code for printing. The CPU performs the instructed operation in the case of the control code, and in the case of the character code, the read-only memory (ROM) in which the dot pattern of the character is stored.
CG (Character Generator)
The font pattern is taken out from the area and developed in the print buffer 7. At this time, character modification processing such as double angle processing is performed. If the print data for one line is accumulated in the print buffer 7 or the print start control code is sent from the computer, the CPU drives the carriage motor to perform printing. Normally, the receive buffer and print buffer are RA
For M, the print buffer has the configuration shown in FIG.
At this time, the print density is set to 360 dpi (Dot Per I
nch) If the number of nozzles of one head is 64, 1
Memory capacity of print buffer for color

[0016]

## EQU00003 ## 11 inches.times.360.times.64 = 253440 bits = 31680 bytes.

<Embodiment 2> FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining the relationship between the printable range and the minimum device width and the print head when wide printing is possible only for Black. In this case, if the data of colors other than Black sent from the computer is converted into Black or ignored, the print buffer can be configured as shown in FIG. That is, it guarantees that no other color buffers are used,
It is possible to have an extended area of Black by overlapping with a color buffer (a Cyan buffer in FIG. 5) following the Black print buffer. As a result, the capacity of the print buffer for one color is the same as that of a conventional color printer.

[0018]

## EQU00004 ## 8 inches.times.360.times.64 = 184320 bits = 23040 bytes.

<Embodiment 3> In FIG. 6, the heads at both ends of the carriage are of the same color (Black in the figure), and a recording width of 14 inches is possible. In this case as well, as in the second embodiment, the data of colors other than Black sent from the computer is converted into Black or ignored, and the print buffer can be configured as shown in FIG. That is, since it is guaranteed that the buffers of other colors are not used, it is possible to have an extended area of Black by overlapping the color buffer (the cyan buffer in FIG. 5) following the black print buffer.

(Others) In the above embodiment, especially in the ink jet recording system, a means (for example, an electrothermal converter or a laser beam) for generating heat energy is used as energy used for ejecting ink. The description has been given by taking as an example the recording head of the type which is provided with the thermal energy and causes a change in the ink state. According to this method, high density and high definition recording can be achieved.

With regard to its typical structure and principle, see, for example, US Pat. No. 4,723,129 and US Pat. No. 4,740.
What is done using the basic principles disclosed in 796 is preferred. This method is a so-called on-demand type,
Although it can be applied to any of the continuous type, particularly in the case of the on-demand type, it can be applied to an electrothermal converter arranged corresponding to a sheet or a liquid path holding a liquid (ink). By applying at least one drive signal corresponding to the recording information and giving a rapid temperature rise exceeding nucleate boiling, heat energy is generated in the electrothermal converter, and film boiling is caused on the heat acting surface of the recording head. Liquid (ink) corresponding to this drive signal in a one-to-one correspondence
This is effective because bubbles can be formed inside. The liquid (ink) is ejected through the ejection openings by the growth and contraction of the bubbles to form at least one droplet. It is more preferable to make this drive signal into a pulse shape, because the bubble growth and contraction are immediately and appropriately performed, so that the ejection of the liquid (ink) with excellent responsiveness can be achieved. As the pulse-shaped drive signal, those described in US Pat. Nos. 4,463,359 and 4,345,262 are suitable. If the conditions described in US Pat. No. 4,313,124 of the invention relating to the rate of temperature rise on the heat acting surface are adopted, more excellent recording can be performed.

As the constitution of the recording head, in addition to the combination constitution of the discharge port, the liquid passage, and the electrothermal converter (the linear liquid passage or the right-angled liquid passage) as disclosed in the above-mentioned respective specifications, U.S. Pat. No. 4,558,333, U.S. Pat. No. 44, which discloses a configuration in which a heat acting portion is arranged in a bending region.
The configuration using the specification of No. 59600 is also included in the present invention. In addition, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 59-123670 discloses a configuration in which a common slit is used as a discharge portion of the electrothermal converter for a plurality of electrothermal converters, and an opening for absorbing a pressure wave of thermal energy is provided. A configuration based on Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 59-138461, which discloses a configuration corresponding to the ejection portion, may be adopted.

In addition, even in the case of the serial type as in the above example, the recording head fixed to the main body of the apparatus, or the electrical connection to the main body of the apparatus or the ink from the main body of the apparatus by being attached to the main body of the apparatus. A replaceable chip type recording head that can be supplied, or a cartridge type recording head in which an ink tank is integrally provided in the recording head itself may be used. .

Further, as the constitution of the recording apparatus of the present invention, it is preferable to add ejection recovery means of the recording head, preliminary auxiliary means, etc. because the recording operation can be further stabilized. Specifically, heating is performed by using a capping means, a cleaning means, a pressure or suction means for the recording head, an electrothermal converter or a heating element other than this, or a combination thereof. Examples thereof include a preliminary heating unit for performing the discharge and a preliminary discharge unit for performing discharge different from the recording.

In addition, in the above-described embodiments of the present invention, the ink is not limited to a liquid substance, and an ink that solidifies at room temperature or below and may be softened or liquefied at room temperature may be used. Alternatively, in the inkjet method, the temperature of the ink itself is generally adjusted within a range of 30 ° C. or higher and 70 ° C. or lower to control the temperature of the ink so that the viscosity of the ink is within a stable ejection range. You may use what makes a liquid. in addition,
In order to positively prevent the temperature rise due to thermal energy from being used as the energy for changing the state of the ink from the solid state to the liquid state, or to prevent the evaporation of the ink, the ink is solidified in the standing state and liquefied by heating. Ink may be used. In any case, by applying heat energy such as ink that is liquefied by applying heat energy according to the recording signal and liquid ink is ejected, or that begins to solidify when it reaches the recording medium. The present invention can be applied to the case where an ink having a property of being liquefied for the first time is used. The ink in such a case is disclosed in JP-A-54-
As described in JP-A-56847 or JP-A-60-71260, a mode in which it is opposed to an electrothermal converter in a state of being held as a liquid or a solid in the recesses or through holes of a porous sheet. May be In the present invention, the most effective one for each of the above-mentioned inks is to execute the above-mentioned film boiling method.

In addition, the ink jet recording apparatus of the present invention may be used as an image output terminal of an information processing apparatus such as a computer, a copying apparatus combined with a reader or the like, and a facsimile apparatus having a transmitting / receiving function. It may be in a form or the like.

[0027]

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to print on wider paper even with the same device width as the conventional one by configuring the print range of each head to be different, and the cost performance can be improved. High-quality printer can be provided.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a print data flow of a printer.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a print buffer according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the second embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a print buffer according to a second embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the third embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating a relationship between a printable range and a device width of a conventional color printer.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Yellow print head 2 Magenta print head 3 Cyan print head 4 Black print head 5 Interface 6 Receive buffer 7 Print buffer 8 Print head

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁵ Identification code Internal reference number FI technical display location B41J 2/485 8804-2C B41J 3/12 L

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A recording method for performing printing with a plurality of print heads, wherein a recording width at the time of printing by a single head among the plurality of print heads and a recording width at the time of printing by the plurality of heads are different. Method. 2. The recording method according to claim 1, wherein a recording width by the single head printing is larger than a recording width by the plural head printing. 3. Converting print data using the plurality of print heads into print data using the single head,
The recording method according to claim 1, wherein printing is performed with a recording width larger than that when the plurality of print heads are used.