JPH1044518A - Image recorder - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an overlapped scanning region in a recording region and to use the overlapped scanning region as another recording region in the recording wherein the scanning region is divided by utilizing two record heads. SOLUTION: Record heads 4A, 4B are provided on a carriage 1 with a predetermined interval (72mm) therebetween. As a result, an overlapped scanning region (154mm) having a width of one-second of a maximum recordable region (298mm) on which the heads 4A, 4B can perform the print by dividing the scanning region can be set. In the maximum recordable region, inks having the same concentration are ejected from the heads 4A, 4B, then two values recording is performed on an A3 size paper. In the overlapped scanning region, inks each having different concentration are ejected from respective heads 4A, 4B, then four values recording is performed on an A5 size paper.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a serial type image recording apparatus for recording characters, images and the like on a recording medium while scanning the recording head while facing the recording medium. The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus capable of dividing a scanning area of each of a plurality of recording heads and performing recording.

In particular, the present invention is suitable for an image recording apparatus which performs recording by applying a color material on a recording medium based on image data, and which performs recording by discharging a liquid recording ink as a color material. It is more suitable for a recording device.

[0003] The present invention also relates to paper, cloth, leather, non-woven fabric, O
The present invention is applicable to all devices using a recording medium such as HP paper and metal, and specific examples of the applicable devices include office equipment such as printers, copiers and facsimile machines, and industrial production equipment. Can be.

[0004]

2. Description of the Related Art A serial type recording system in which recording is performed while scanning a recording head is inexpensive as compared with a system using a so-called full line head which covers the entire width of a recording medium such as recording paper. For that reason, it is generally used in various image recording apparatuses.

[0005] In such a serial type image recording apparatus, as a system for coloring a recording medium with a coloring material, a heating element of a thermal head is applied to a special heat-sensitive paper, or an optical action to a special photosensitive paper is performed. Is known. Further, as a method of performing recording by applying a coloring material to a recording medium by a recording head, an ink ribbon impregnated with a liquid ink as a coloring material is pressed and brought into contact with the recording medium by a printing wire. An impact recording method for transferring ink, a heat-melt transfer recording method or a thermal sublimation transfer method for transferring ink by applying a heating element of a thermal head to an ink ribbon head coated with a solid color material, or a liquid recording ink There is known an inkjet type in which recording is performed by discharging ink.

[0006] In recent years, from the viewpoint of plain paper recording and the like, the latter type of recording method using a coloring material has become mainstream.
In particular, the ink jet system has advantages such as low noise, low running cost, easy downsizing of the apparatus, recording on plain paper, easy colorization, and the like, and is generally used for image recording apparatuses such as printers and copiers. Is what it is.

However, this serial recording method is
A recording head capable of recording only in a relatively small range of a recording element, such as an ejection port provided in the recording head, is arranged on the carriage, and the recording is performed while sequentially scanning, so that the recording speed is reduced. It is relatively difficult to improve the recording speed, and increasing the recording speed has been a conventional problem for the serial system.

On the other hand, to speed up image recording,
Methods of increasing the recording width of the recording head (array range of the recording elements), increasing the carriage speed and the recording frequency to shorten the scanning time, and recording by bidirectional scanning have been proposed and put to practical use. However, each method has its limitations. For example, in order to increase the recording width, it is necessary to improve the head manufacturing accuracy accordingly, which makes the recording head expensive, and increases the capacity of a print buffer for temporarily storing recording data and increases the cost. And the use of heat to develop color or add colorant, especially when the recording width is large, prevents the recording quality from deteriorating or being damaged due to the self-heating of the recording head itself. The need for means for doing so increases. Furthermore, in an ink jet recording system using a liquid recording ink that is not in contact with the recording medium, the use of a head having a large recording width prevents deterioration of recording quality due to swelling (cockling) of the recording medium due to absorption of ink moisture. There is also a problem that the means for performing this is complicated. Also,
When increasing the recording frequency, it is necessary to increase the scanning speed of the carriage in order to maintain a constant pixel density. The recording quality may be degraded due to the ink vibration inside.

One relatively effective method for increasing the speed of a serial type image recording apparatus is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 50-81437.
No. 6,086,045. In this publication, a left print head assembly and a right print head assembly supported by one carriage mechanism are used to simultaneously print the left half and the right half of a print line, respectively, thereby achieving about twice as high speed. It is disclosed that it is possible.
Further, the publication discloses that a higher recording speed can be realized by increasing the number of print head assemblies to two or more or performing bidirectional recording.

[0010]

However, most of the prior arts disclosed in such publications simply divide a scanning area simply from the viewpoint of high-speed recording, and therefore, a plurality of heads overlap. No configuration is disclosed that positively considers the scanning region. That is, from the viewpoint of high-speed printing, the overlapping scanning area should be eliminated as much as possible, and such an area is not used as a printing area different from the printing area including the divided scanning areas.

The present invention has been made from a novel viewpoint not found in the prior art, and an object of the present invention is to utilize an area where a plurality of heads scans in an overlapping manner and use the area of another size. An object of the present invention is to provide an image recording apparatus capable of performing recording as a recording area and performing high-speed recording by divided scanning on a recording area having a size larger than the overlapping scanning area.

Another object of the present invention is to provide an image recording apparatus capable of switching between high-speed recording of a large-sized recording area and high-quality recording of a small-sized recording area using a light and dark color material. It is in.

Still another object of the present invention is to provide an image recording apparatus capable of effectively utilizing an image data memory.

[0014]

According to the present invention, there is provided:
An image recording apparatus that performs recording on a recording medium using a plurality of recording heads, wherein the plurality of recording heads each scan a divided scanning area including an overlapping scanning area common to the plurality of recording heads. Means for scanning at least two of the plurality of recording heads when the scanning means causes each of the plurality of recording heads to scan the divided scanning area.
The first mode recording is performed using at least one recording head,
When each of the plurality of print heads scans the overlapping scanning area, a second
Recording means for recording a mode, wherein the recording mode is different from each other in the first mode and the second mode.

An image recording apparatus for performing recording on a recording medium by using a plurality of recording heads, wherein each of the plurality of recording heads includes a divided scan including an overlapping scanning area common to the plurality of recording heads. Scanning means for scanning an area;
When the scanning unit causes each of the plurality of recording heads to scan the divided scanning area, the scanning unit uses at least two or more of the plurality of recording heads to perform the scanning.
When performing printing in the first mode in the maximum scanning area of the divided scanning areas of one or more recording heads, and causing each of the plurality of recording heads to scan the overlapping scanning area of about 1 / n of the maximum scanning area, Means for performing printing in the second mode using the plurality of printing heads, wherein the number of gradations in the first mode is 2 and the number of gradations in the second mode is 2 ⁿ Recording control means, means commonly used in the first mode and the second mode,
Memory means for storing the same amount of drive data in the first and second modes.

According to the above arrangement, printing in the scanning area by at least two or more of the divided scanning areas of the plurality of recording heads and printing in the overlapping scanning area common to the plurality of divided scanning areas are performed. Since recording can be performed in different modes, various recordings such as recording size and gradation can be performed by using different combinations of recording densities and the like of a plurality of recording heads.

Further, since the size of each area and the ratio of the gradation value can be appropriately determined, the drive data memory shared by each recording mode can be effectively used.

[0018]

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

Before describing an image recording apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, a general relationship between high-speed recording and an overlapping scanning area will be described with reference to FIG. In FIG. 1, when the carriage 1 performs the printing operation of the maximum printable area 218m using the two print heads 4A and 4B, the moving distance for scanning is 114 mm which is the width of the print area of each head. is there. Therefore, the smaller the area, the higher the recording speed related to the carriage movement. The recording area of the head is determined by an interval between the heads 4A and 4B (hereinafter, referred to as a head interval, which means a distance between ink ejection ports of each head).

On the other hand, the area in which each of the heads 4A and 4B scans in an overlapping manner (hereinafter referred to as an overlap scanning area) is a value obtained by subtracting the head interval from the width of the recording area of each head. For this reason, it is desirable to make the overlapping scanning area as small as possible for the purpose of simply improving the printing speed. However, if printing of a predetermined size is to be performed in the overlapping scanning area, the size and printing speed should be improved. The balance with the degree becomes a problem.

However, considering the divisional recording by the recording heads 4A and 4B from the viewpoint of the size that can be recorded by these divisional recordings, a comparatively large recording area by the divisional recording and a comparatively small recording area by the overlapping scanning area are used. The printing can be performed in a variety of ways depending on the type of ink used for recording of each size.

The present embodiment has been made from such a viewpoint, and FIG. 2 shows a main configuration thereof.

Referring to FIG. 2, ink-jet recording heads 4A and 4B are mounted on a carriage 1 with a head spacing of 72 mm, and tanks 5A and 5 storing ink supplied to these heads, respectively.
B is mounted. The head and the tank are configured to be detachable from the carriage 1 individually. Note that, depending on the type of ink used as described below, the head and the tank may be formed integrally, and the integrated head and tank may be made detachable from the carriage 1.

The carriage 1 is slidably supported by the guide rails 2 and engages with a drive mechanism (not shown) such as a belt for transmitting a driving force of drive data (not shown), whereby the guide rails 2 for scanning along. As a result, the carriage 1 can be moved within the scannable space (358 mm) shown in FIG. 2 by the movement, and at this time, the ink ejection ports of the heads 4A and 4B are positioned within the respective scan areas (258 mm). can do. The head 4A scans the recording area (226 mm), which is a divided scanning area on the left side in the figure, except for the ramp-up and ramp-down areas that are acceleration / deceleration areas during carriage movement, while the head 4B scans on the right side in the figure. The recording area (226 mm), which is a divided scanning area, is scanned.

Caps 6A and 6B are provided in a part of the scannable space of the carriage 1, that is, below the extending platen 3, corresponding to the ink discharge ports of the two heads 4A and 4B. Thus, capping of each head at the home position can be performed. Also, a cap 6B provided in the recording area
Is connected to a pump 7 for sucking ink or the like through the above. Thereby, each head 4A and 4B
Move to a position facing the cap 6B at a predetermined timing, and the cap 6B moves in the head direction and contacts the head 6B in the same manner as the capping operation, and the suction operation by the pump 7 can be performed in this state. . Also,
A wiper 8 is provided adjacent to the cap 6B. The wiper 8 projects at a predetermined timing into the scanning path of the head, so that wiping can be performed by contacting the ejection opening surface of each head. Further, in the scannable space of the carriage 1, a preliminary ejection receiver 9 is provided at an end opposite to the end where the cap 6A is provided, and the head 4B moves to this position at a predetermined timing to perform preliminary ejection. It can be carried out. The preliminary ejection of the head 4A is performed in the same manner.
This becomes possible by moving the head 4A to a position facing the cap 6A. In addition, as described above, the carriage can be scanned by providing a configuration for suction recovery in the recording area and also for the same purpose, or providing a preliminary ejection receiver at the end opposite to each other for each head. We can take maximum recordable area for space to the maximum,
In other words, the size of the apparatus can be made as small as possible for a certain maximum recordable area.

In the image recording apparatus of the present embodiment described above, the head interval (72 mm), which is the distance between the ejection ports of the heads 4A and 4B, is the maximum recording that is possible by dividing the scanning area of each head. It is set to approximately １ ／ of the possible area (298 mm). And
As a result, the width of the overlapping scanning area becomes 154 mm. These size settings correspond to the width of A3 (297 mm × 420 mm standard size) size paper (recording medium) whose maximum recordable area is relatively large, while the overlap scanning area is A5 (148 mm × 210 mm). This corresponds to the width of a sheet of the standard size. That is, the width of the maximum recordable area is set to approximately twice the width of the overlap scanning area.

In the present embodiment, when printing is performed on, for example, A3 size paper corresponding to the maximum printable area, the same type of ink is ejected from the heads 4A and 4B, and printing is performed on each divided area. . In contrast,
When printing is performed on, for example, A5 size paper corresponding to the overlapping scanning area, printing is performed using dark and light inks having different densities.

According to the image recording apparatus of the present embodiment shown in FIG. 2, when recording in the A3 size, the scanning area is divided by using two heads, so that a fixed recording is performed as compared with the case of recording by one head. Speed gains can be obtained. At the same time, by maximizing the maximum recordable area with respect to the carriage scannable space, the size of the recording apparatus can be reduced.

FIGS. 3A and 3B show the above A
FIG. 4 is a diagram schematically illustrating a configuration of ink tanks 5A and 5B (heads 4A and 4B) in a case where printing is performed in three sizes and a case where printing is performed in A5 size.

As shown in FIG. 3A, in the case of A3 size printing by dividing the scanning area of each head 4A and 4B,
Heads 4A each comprising a yellow (Y), magenta (M), cyan (C) and black (K) head
And 4B perform printing by discharging ink of the same density.
Therefore, each ink tank 5A (5AK, 5AC, 5A
M and 5AY) and 5B (5BK, 5BC, 5BM and 5BY) are mounted with inks of the same density stored for each color. When printing is performed in the maximum printable area such as A3 size, when the heads 4A and 4B perform scanning while overlapping each other, various sharing of printing by each head can be considered, but in the present embodiment, the head of each color ink is used. The number of ejection ports used for a plurality of ejection ports in (1) decreases in the scanning direction and the number of ejection ports increases in the scanning direction. At each ejection position, the number of ejection ports used always corresponds to one head in total of the heads 4A and 4B. The division of each head is determined so that

On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 3B, in the case where, for example, printing of A5 size is performed in the overlapping scanning area, the head 4A ejects the same dark ink as described above and the head 4B
Ejects light ink. Therefore, each ink tank 5A
(5AK, 5AC, 5AM and 5AY) are those in which ordinary dark ink is stored for each color ink, while ink tanks 5B (5BK, 5BC, 5BM and 5B) are stored.
In the case of Y), light inks of the respective color inks are mounted.

FIGS. 4A and 4B are diagrams schematically showing the head drive data and the recording results based on the data when the above-described A3 size and A5 size printing are performed, respectively.

When printing in the A3 size, as described above, binary printing is performed to determine whether or not the same density ink is ejected from the recording heads 4A and 4B for each color ink. FIG. 4A shows the driving data stored in the RAM in this case and the ink ejection result for each pixel based on this data. The black circles of the inks K, C, M, and Y shown in the RAM indicate the contents of one bit, and indicate that the data is "1" indicating that the ink should be ejected. Note that data "0" can be represented by a white circle. The 1-bit data of the RAM corresponds to the data of one pixel in recording. FIG.
In the example shown in (A), all the data stored in the RAM is "1", and as a result, the printing result is so-called solid printing in which ink is discharged to all pixels as shown in FIG.

As described above, when the A3 size recording is performed, in the image of one line shown in FIG. 3, predetermined pixels on the left side in the figure are recorded by the head 4A, and predetermined pixels on the right side in the figure are recorded by the head 4A. The heads 4A and 4B share the recording in accordance with the above-described predetermined sharing rule in the portion recorded by the head 4B and corresponding to the overlapping scanning area of each head.

On the other hand, in the A5 size printing in the overlapping scanning area shown in FIG. 4B, quaternary printing is performed. That is,
The drive data is data representing “non-discharge”, “light ink discharge”, “dark ink discharge”, and “light ink and dark ink discharge” for each color ink (in the figure, “light ink and dark ink discharge” (Only data is shown), these data are stored in RAM. Therefore,
The drive data for one pixel is represented by two bits. The example shown in the figure shows a case where two bits corresponding to each pixel of the RAM have data for recording a pixel with the maximum density, that is, data for discharging both light ink and dark ink. I have. In the case of performing A5 size recording, one bit of the 2-bit data corresponding to each pixel of the RAM shown in FIG. 4B is used as the driving data of the head 4A and the other bit is used as the driving data. The data is distributed to the respective head drivers as drive data for the head 4B.

As is apparent from the above description of FIGS. 4A and 4B, according to the present embodiment, the case where A3 size printing is performed by dividing the scanning area of the two heads, In the case where A5 size printing is performed by the overlap scanning, the storage amount of the RAM for the drive data for one line is the same. As a result, one RA
M can be used without excess and deficiency, and the device memory can be effectively used. In other words, in the case of A3 size, binary recording is performed, so that only one bit of memory capacity is required for one pixel. On the other hand, in the case of A5 size, four values are recorded, so that two bits are required for one pixel. . On the other hand, the width of one line recorded by two heads is A5.
In size recording, it is 1/2 of A3 size, so RAM
Will have the same number of bits.

The effective use of the RAM as described above is not limited to the case where two recording heads are used as in the present embodiment. For example, three recording heads are used for each color, and each of them ejects ink of dark, medium, and light density, and the overlapping areas are “non-ejected”, “light ink ejected”, “medium ink ejected”, and “dark ink”. 4 of "ink ejection"
In the case where printing is performed by using values and printing by divided scanning is performed using two print heads that eject dark ink, the same effect can be obtained by setting the width ratio of each area to 2: 1 as described above. Can be obtained.

It is clear from the above description that the same effect can be obtained even when the width of each area and the ratio of each gradation value of recording in each area are the same.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram relating to the driving of the heating element of the recording head 4 (4A, 4B), and shows the black ink K as a representative of the ejection head. Heating element 41
-1 to 41-24 are provided corresponding to the 24 ink ejection ports, respectively, and have a configuration capable of independently generating heat.
When all of the heating elements 41 are driven simultaneously, a large current flows at one time, so that the load on the power supply increases, and the energy supplied to each heating element decreases due to a voltage drop due to wiring resistance or the like, so that normal recording is performed. There is also a concern about adverse effects on image quality, such as the possibility that the image will not be displayed. Therefore, in the head of the present embodiment, the recording head 4 is arranged at a slight inclination, and a known time-division driving is performed in which the ejection is performed by adjusting the image data and the recording timing for each block including a predetermined number of heating elements.

The time-division driving method may be any of those proposed and implemented. In the present embodiment, the time-division driving method is divided into eight blocks each having eight discharge ports including eight discharge ports which are intervals between ink colors. The recording head 4 is sequentially ejected at predetermined intervals, and the recording head 4
And discharge is performed while tilting the recording line, thereby preventing a straight line from being recorded due to a discharge time difference.

The ink in the discharge port, which has been rapidly heated by the heat generated by the heating element 41, forms bubbles due to film boiling, and the ink droplets are discharged toward the recording medium P by the pressure of the bubble generation, and characters are printed on the recording medium. And images can be formed. At this time, the volume of each color ink droplet ejected is about 40
ng. Each of the discharge ports is provided with an ink liquid path including the heating element 40, which communicates with the discharge port, and is provided behind the portion where the ink liquid path is provided for supplying ink to these liquid paths. A common liquid chamber is provided for each color.

The common liquid chamber is connected to the ink tanks 5 (5A, 5B) of the respective colors via an ink supply furnace so as to supply ink. In the ink liquid passage corresponding to each of the discharge ports, a heating element 41, which is an electric-to-heat converter that generates thermal energy used to discharge ink droplets from these discharge ports, and supplies power to the heat element 41 Electrode wiring is provided. These heating elements 41 and electrode wirings are formed on a substrate made of silicon or the like by a film forming technique. A protective film is formed on the heating element 41 so that the ink does not directly contact the heating element 41. further,
By laminating a partition made of a resin or a glass material on this substrate, the above-described discharge port, ink liquid path, common liquid chamber, and the like are formed. As described above, the heating element 41 which is an electric / heat conversion element
Is a so-called bubble jet recording method because it uses bubbles formed by applying thermal energy when ejecting ink droplets.

The AND gates 42-1 to 42-24 are provided with a selection signal for time division output from the decoder 43,
The logical product of the drive data output from the latch circuit 44 and the heat enable signal that defines the drive time is calculated, and the drive signal is output to the heating element 41. Shift register 45
Converts the serially input image data into parallel data and outputs it to the latch circuit 44.

As a monitoring mechanism for the recording heads 4A and 4B,
In this embodiment, the recording head 4 is further provided with a temperature sensor 46. This stabilizes the recording characteristics, such as determining the optimum driving conditions of the recording heads according to the temperatures of the recording heads 4A and 4B, and operating the maintenance mechanism based on the temperature information.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of the image recording apparatus of the ink jet system described above. Character or image data to be recorded (hereinafter, referred to as image data) is input from a host computer to a reception buffer of the recording apparatus.
Check that data is being transferred correctly,
Data notifying the operation state of the recording device is transmitted from the recording device to the host computer. The data in the receiving buffer is controlled under the control of the CPU 21, is temporarily stored in a print buffer (RAM) 24, and is provided to the recording heads 4A and 4B as recording data. That is, the RAM 24 stores the drive data R shown in FIG.
AM is configured. The paper feed mechanism 26 is provided with the paper monitoring mechanism 2.
In response to a command from the CPU 21 based on the information of No. 5, the paper feed roller and the line feed roller are driven by controlling a drive source such as a motor. The carriage driving mechanism 28 controls the carriage driving source in accordance with a command from the CPU 21 based on the information of the carriage position detecting mechanism 27 to control the carriage 1.
To control the driving. The recording head maintenance mechanism 30 includes:
The maintenance of the head 4 and the optimization of the driving conditions can be performed by instructions from the CPU 21 based on the information of the recording head monitoring mechanism section 29 including the detection of the recording head temperature, the presence / absence of an ink sensor, and the like.

[0046]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the present invention, recording in a scanning area by at least two or more divided scanning areas of a plurality of recording heads and a common recording area for the plurality of divided scanning areas are performed. Since the recording in the overlapping scanning area can be performed in a different manner,
By using different combinations of recording densities and the like of the plurality of recording heads, various recordings such as recording size and gradation can be performed.

Further, since the size of each area and the ratio of gradation values can be appropriately determined, the drive data shared by each recording mode can be effectively used by the memory.

As a result, for example, it is possible to provide an image recording apparatus capable of performing large-size recording at high speed and switching small-size high-gradation recording.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a relationship between divided recording and duplicate recording when two recording heads are used.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for explaining divided recording and overlapping recording when two recording heads are used in an image recording apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIGS. 3A and 3B are diagrams schematically showing ink tanks used for divided printing and overlapping printing in the embodiment shown in FIG. 2, respectively.

FIGS. 4A and 4B are drive data storage RAMs in divided recording and duplicate recording of the embodiment, respectively.
FIG. 4 is a diagram schematically showing a recording result for each pixel.

FIG. 5 is a circuit diagram showing a recording head drive circuit that can be used in one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram illustrating a control configuration of the image recording apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Carriage 2 Guide rail 4A, 4B Recording head 5A, 5AK, 5AC, 5AM, 5AY, 5B, 5B
K, 5BC, 5BM, 5BY Ink tank 6A, 6B Cap 7 Suction pump 8 Wiper 21 CPU 24 Print buffer (RAM)

Claims (12)

[Claims] 1. An image recording apparatus that performs recording on a recording medium using a plurality of recording heads, wherein the plurality of recording heads are divided by a scan including an overlapping scanning area common to the plurality of recording heads. Scanning means for scanning an area; and when the scanning means causes each of the plurality of recording heads to scan the divided scanning area, at least two or more of the plurality of recording heads are used in a first mode. Means for causing the plurality of print heads to perform scanning in the overlapping scanning area, and performing printing in the second mode using the plurality of print heads, wherein the first mode and the An image recording apparatus, comprising: recording control means for making a recording mode of each of the second modes different. 2. The image recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the recording control unit changes a recording mode by changing a gradation number in each of the first mode and the second mode. apparatus. 3. The printing medium used in each of the first mode and the second mode has a different density of the printing material, and the printing control unit has different density of the printing material in each of the first mode and the second mode. 3. The image recording apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the number of gradations is varied by causing a set of recording heads to perform recording. 4. The image recording apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the recording material is ink, and the plurality of recording heads perform recording by discharging ink. 5. The printing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein each of the plurality of recording heads generates bubbles in the ink by using thermal energy, and discharges the ink by the pressure of the bubbles. Image recording device. 6. The method according to claim 1, wherein a size of a divided scan area of at least two or more print heads in the first mode is larger than a size of an overlap scan area of the plurality of print heads in the second mode. The image recording device according to claim 1. 7. The image recording apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the size of the maximum scanning area of the divided scanning area in the first mode is substantially twice the size of the overlapping scanning area of the second mode. apparatus. 8. The image recording apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the size of the first mode is A3 size, and the size of the second mode is A5 size. 9. The image recording apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the recording control unit sets the number of gradations in the first mode to two, and sets the number of gradations in the second mode to four. apparatus. 10. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the scanning unit includes a carriage movably provided in the scanning direction, and the plurality of recording heads are detachably mounted on the carriage. The image recording device according to any one of the above. 11. The first mode according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of recording heads are mounted on the carriage at a predetermined interval from each other, and the predetermined interval is determined in relation to a divided scanning area of each of the plurality of recording heads. 11. The image recording apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the maximum scanning area of the divided scanning area by at least two or more recording heads is approximately twice as large as the overlapping scanning area in the second mode. 12. An image recording apparatus for performing recording on a recording medium by using a plurality of recording heads, wherein the plurality of recording heads each include a divided scan including an overlapping scanning area common to the plurality of recording heads. Scanning means for scanning an area; and when the scanning means causes each of the plurality of recording heads to perform scanning of the divided scanning area, at least two or more of the plurality of recording heads are used.
When performing printing in the first mode in the maximum scanning area of the divided scanning areas of one or more recording heads, and causing each of the plurality of recording heads to scan the overlapping scanning area of about 1 / n of the maximum scanning area, Means for performing printing in the second mode using the plurality of printing heads, wherein the number of gradations in the first mode is 2 and the number of gradations in the second mode is 2 ⁿ Recording control means; and memory means which is used in common in the first mode and the second mode and stores the same amount of drive data in the first and second modes. Image recording device.