Patents Examined by Thinh Nguyen
  • Patent number: 9211715
    Abstract: A liquid ejection head including a recording element substrate provided with a substrate and a flow-path-forming member forming a flow path in a principal surface of the substrate, a support member supporting the recording element substrate and an underfill material covering at least a joint portion at which the substrate and the support member are joined to each other, wherein the flow-path-forming member is formed in such a manner that an end portion thereof projects from at least one side surface of the substrate, the underfill material covers an external surface of the joint portion and covers the at least one side surface of the substrate in such a manner that the underfill material reaches the projecting end portion of the flow-path-forming member.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 8, 2014
    Date of Patent: December 15, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Satoshi Ibe, Shingo Nagata
  • Patent number: 9211750
    Abstract: A printing apparatus includes a cavity in which a pressure inside is increased or decreased due to displacement of a piezoelectric element; a nozzle that communicates the cavity and is capable of ejecting an ink filled in the inside; a driving signal generation unit that supplies a driving signal to the piezoelectric element; a detection unit that detects a change of an electromotive force of the piezoelectric element as a residual vibration signal; a comparison signal generation unit that generates a first comparison signal by binarizing the residual vibration signal with a first threshold potential and generates a second comparison signal by binarizing the residual vibration signal with a second threshold potential; and a determination data generation unit that determines an ejection state of a liquid in the nozzle based on at least the first comparison signal and the second comparison signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 12, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 15, 2015
    Assignee: SEIKO EPSON CORPORATION
    Inventor: Osamu Shinkawa
  • Patent number: 9205643
    Abstract: The present invention provides a method for manufacturing printed products using an industrial inkjet printer and the method does not generate soiling of the images and printing unevenness. The present invention provides a method for manufacturing a printed product using an industrial inkjet printer, comprising: a step for printing on coated printing paper using an industrial inkjet printer, wherein the printing speed of the industrial inkjet printer is 60 m/min or more, the coated printing paper contains a support and a coating layer, and the coating layer contains ground calcium carbonate, having a cumulative frequency of a particle diameter of 1.0 ?m or less in a volume-based particle size distribution of 95% by volume or more and a mean particle diameter of 0.1 ?m to 0.28 ?m, at 60% by mass or more of the total amount of pigment in the coating layer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 8, 2013
    Date of Patent: December 8, 2015
    Assignee: MITSUBISHI PAPER MILLS LIMITED
    Inventors: Masanori Nagoshi, Koji Idei, Jun Urasaki
  • Patent number: 9205688
    Abstract: The inkjet printing system includes a print information receiving unit that receives print information including work piece types, print images, and print conditions (S231), an image arrangement deciding unit that decides an image arrangement that is an arrangement of the print images on a pallet (S232 to S242), a work piece arrangement outputting unit that outputs a work piece arrangement that is an arrangement of work pieces according to the image arrangement (S243), and a print executing unit that executes printing on the work pieces on the pallet based on the print image, print conditions, and image arrangement, wherein the image arrangement deciding unit decides the image arrangement in a state where a plurality of print images with the common specific print conditions being predetermined conditions among the print conditions is aligned in a main scanning direction (S232, S233).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 29, 2013
    Date of Patent: December 8, 2015
    Assignee: MIMAKI ENGINEERING CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Akira Ikeda, Hisayuki Kobayashi, Daisuke Kondo
  • Patent number: 9205645
    Abstract: In a method to control printing elements of an ink print head for ejection of a respective ink droplet, respective control voltages are applied to activators of the printing elements. The control voltages comprise at least one vibration voltage pulse that induces at least one vibration oscillation in the associated printing element, and an associated print dot voltage pulse that induces an ejection of the respective ink droplet by the associated printing element. The at least one vibration voltage pulse is chronologically arranged before the associated print dot voltage pulse, and an amplitude of the at least one vibration voltage pulse is respectively chosen depending on a size of the respective ink droplet to be subsequently emitted by the respective printing element.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 5, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 8, 2015
    Assignee: Océ Printing Systems GmbH & Co. KG
    Inventor: Philippe Koerner
  • Patent number: 9199467
    Abstract: An ink ejecting printer includes a recording head disposed with a prescribed clearance between the recording head and a recording medium having a predetermined length in a main scanning direction and ejects ink droplets onto the recording medium, a partitioning member longer than the recording head that has a predetermined width and can be moved between a position facing the recording head and a retracted position, a supporting member that supports the partitioning member movable between the position facing the recording head and the retracted position, a biasing unit that biases the supporting member toward the partitioning member is at the retracted position, a moving unit that moves the supporting member toward the partitioning member is at the position facing the recording head against the biasing unit, and a drive controller that moves the partitioning member to the position facing the recording head and performs dummy ejection at predetermined times.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 21, 2014
    Date of Patent: December 1, 2015
    Assignee: RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
    Inventors: Noriyuki Sai, Kazuyoshi Matsumoto, Soyoung Park
  • Patent number: 9193197
    Abstract: A liquid droplet detecting device includes nozzles arranged in a paper width direction orthogonal to a paper conveying direction to discharge liquid droplets, a light emitting element provided on one side of the paper width direction to emit a light beam for liquid droplet detection, a light receiving element provided on the other side of the paper width direction to receive the light beam, a storage in which correspondence information on each of the nozzles and a scan position of the light beam when discharge of a liquid droplet from each of the nozzles is detected is stored, a controller to allow the light beam to scan according to the correspondence information, and a detector to determine presence or absence a liquid droplet discharged from each nozzle from an output of the light receiving element.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 11, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 24, 2015
    Assignee: Ricoh Company, Ltd.
    Inventors: Genichiro Kawamichi, Shigeru Morinaga, Hideharu Miki, Hiroshi Ando, Kahei Nakamura, Kazuhiro Akatsu, Hirotaka Kobayashi, Keiichi Watanabe
  • Patent number: 9193169
    Abstract: The method of this invention for discharging a shipping ink from a newly installed print head filled with that ink minimizes the amount of shipping ink that may remain in the print head after the ink discharging process is performed. The shipping ink discharging method according to this invention comprises: a print head; an ink tank; a first pump; a second pump; a switch valve; and a cleaning mechanism; wherein the switch valve is closed and the first pump is operated to discharge the shipping ink from the ink ejection nozzles and the cleaning mechanism is operated to clean the print head, after which the switch valve is opened and the second pump is operated to supply ink from the ink tank to the print head.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 24, 2015
    Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Shunya Sunouchi, Seiji Suzuki, Takaya Sato
  • Patent number: 9186915
    Abstract: A drying device includes: a drying unit including: a heating space having a heating unit; a drying space that has a conveyance path of a recording medium and in which the recording medium is dried by radiation heat produced by the heating unit; and a partition member that separates the heating space and the drying space from each other in such a manner that gas can move between the heating space and the drying space; a first supply unit that supplies gas to the drying unit in a direction that is opposite to a conveying direction of the recording medium; and a second supply unit that supplies gas to the drying unit in a direction from the heating unit to the partition member.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2014
    Date of Patent: November 17, 2015
    Assignee: Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Satoshi Hasebe, Norio Hokari, Hirotake Sasaki, Masahiko Sekimoto, Toshinobu Hamazaki, Masato Matsuduki
  • Patent number: 9180682
    Abstract: A printing apparatus includes a printing head that includes a nozzle array, and a discharging control unit. The nozzle array is divided into a plurality of nozzle groups that is configured by a predetermined number of nozzles. The discharge control unit, when an abnormal nozzle having abnormal function of discharging the ink is included in any of the plurality of nozzle groups in a case of discharging the ink to a band area from the nozzle of each of the plurality of nozzle groups by assigning halftone data to the nozzle of each of the plurality of nozzle groups, assigns the halftone data assigned to the abnormal nozzle to the nozzle that is included in other pluralities of nozzle groups which are not the nozzle group including the abnormal nozzle according to a ratio that is a preset assignment ratio for each of the other pluralities of nozzle groups.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 7, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 10, 2015
    Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation
    Inventors: Masahiro Fukazawa, Naoki Sudo, Akito Sato
  • Patent number: 9168748
    Abstract: Disclosed are devices and methods where a distance between nozzle arrays is equal to a substrate advance distance corresponding to at least one complete turn of a rotating drive body.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 20, 2012
    Date of Patent: October 27, 2015
    Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
    Inventors: Alberto Borrego Lebrato, David Chanclón Fernández, Martin Urrutia Nebreda
  • Patent number: 9162508
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus that performs preliminary discharge operation without a carriage and a recording medium interfering with each other is provided. The inkjet recording apparatus performs, at a center region in a conveyance direction of a recording medium, the preliminary operation at a position according to an edge portion of the recording medium obtained by an optical sensor. Further, the inkjet recording apparatus performs, at a leading edge region and a trailing edge region of a recording medium, the preliminary operation at a position based on input data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 11, 2013
    Date of Patent: October 20, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Akiyoshi Sahara
  • Patent number: 9162466
    Abstract: A liquid housing body recycling method is provided for a liquid housing body that includes a liquid housing unit that is configured to house liquid, a supply member with a supply port that is configured to be connected to a liquid supply tube of a liquid consuming device, and a filter through which the liquid is configured to pass, with the liquid inside the liquid housing unit being supplied to the liquid consuming device via the supply port by passing through the filter. The liquid housing body recycling method includes forming an opening part on the liquid housing unit at a position outside an area facing opposite the filter on the liquid housing unit, injecting the liquid from the opening part of the liquid housing unit on which the opening part has been formed, and sealing the opening part.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 2, 2014
    Date of Patent: October 20, 2015
    Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation
    Inventors: Takumi Nagashima, Taku Ishizawa
  • Patent number: 9162441
    Abstract: An inkjet printer includes an inkjet head including nozzles arranged in a first direction, a head scanning mechanism moving the inkjet head along a second direction perpendicular to the first direction, a feeding mechanism feeding the recording medium along the first direction, and a storage device storing upstream correction information and downstream correction information. A controller performs a first determination process for determining a correction value for a specific scanning operation by using the upstream correction information when an image is printed on an upstream area adjacent to a specific area corresponding to the specific scanning operation and when no image is printed on a downstream area adjacent to the specific area, and a second determination process for determining the correction value by using the downstream correction information when no image is printed on the upstream area and when an image be printed on the downstream area.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 27, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 20, 2015
    Assignee: Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Kengo Noda
  • Patent number: 9162460
    Abstract: An inkjet printer is configured to acquire gap variation information related to a variation of a gap between a specific portion of an ink discharging surface and a recording sheet as a function of an inkjet head position, the specific portion located within a usage nozzle disposed area where usage nozzle rows to be actually used are disposed, determine representative gap variation information related to a variation, as a function of the inkjet head position, of a representative gap representing actual gaps between the usage nozzle rows and the recording sheet, by multiplying the gap variation information by a correction coefficient dependent on a width of the usage nozzle disposed area in a head moving direction and a wavelength of a wave shape of the recording sheet, and determine ink discharging timing based on the representative gap variation information, assuming that the actual gaps are equal to the representative gap.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 7, 2014
    Date of Patent: October 20, 2015
    Assignee: BROTHER KOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Kohei Terada
  • Patent number: 9156249
    Abstract: A recording apparatus includes a plurality of complementing units which form a complementing dot for complementing a dot to be formed using a defective nozzle; and a selection unit which selects any complementing unit from among the plurality of complementing units, in which the plurality of complementing units includes a substitute nozzle complementing unit which forms the complementing dot on the first raster using a substitute nozzle, without using a vicinity formation nozzle; and a combination complementing unit which forms a complementing dot on the first raster using the substitute nozzle, and on the second raster using the vicinity formation nozzle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 1, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 13, 2015
    Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation
    Inventors: Akito Sato, Naoki Sudo
  • Patent number: 9160892
    Abstract: A print head protection system is used in connection with an inkjet printer having a print head adapted for elevating. A projector upstream of the print head projects a reference pattern onto the media sheet. An imaging camera captures a digital image of the projected pattern. An analyzer compares the digital image of the projected pattern with the reference pattern. If moiré fringes are detected, the moiré fringes are analyzed for media sheet curl. An error signal is created when the sheet curl exceeds a predetermined distance above the process path. A mitigation control raises the print head to preclude damage in response to the signal. Alternately, the sheet can be discarded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 26, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 13, 2015
    Assignee: Xerox Corporation
    Inventors: Timothy G. Shelhart, Aaron M. Moore, Samuel P. Sadtler, Donald R. Fess
  • Patent number: 9156252
    Abstract: A liquid ejection apparatus and a sensor unit are capable of reducing the amount of mist adhering to an optical element. The liquid ejection apparatus includes a carriage including an ejection head mounted thereon for ejecting a liquid, and a sensor unit accommodating an optical element attached to the carriage, wherein the sensor unit has a first opening and a second opening which is communicated with the first opening and forms a light path between the optical element and the medium.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 9, 2014
    Date of Patent: October 13, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Ryo Harigae
  • Patent number: 9150009
    Abstract: A discharge amount of ink is corrected so that thinning rates of a discharge amount of ink to be discharged to an end portion on an upstream side in a scanning direction are larger than thinning rates of a discharge amount of ink to be discharged to an end portion on a downstream side in the scanning direction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 25, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 6, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Yoshinori Nakajima
  • Patent number: 9150012
    Abstract: Raggedness of thin lines or edges is suppressed to improve straightness. For each of the pixels forming image data, each pixel in the image data is assigned to a printing element for outputting a pixel value of the pixel. A control unit controls printing of the image data by driving the plurality of printing elements by time-division driving in which a different driving timing is set to each printing element according to assignment. The control unit drives the printing elements such that the printing elements included in a printing element array are associated with a plurality of different driving timings and further a plurality of printing element arrays have different orders of driving timings for the respective printing elements in an arrangement direction. Distribution information assigns to the pixel a printing element driven at a reference driving timing or a driving timing close to the reference driving timing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 26, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 6, 2015
    Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Takashi Ochiai, Hitoshi Fukamachi