Patents by Inventor Taku Yokozawa

Taku Yokozawa has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9139008
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus includes a recording head including a discharge port, a carriage configured to perform reciprocating scanning with the recording head mounted thereon, a main tank configured to store ink, a sub-tank configured to be supplied with ink from the main tank via a tube, a supply tube configured to connect the recording head and the sub-tank, and a control unit configured to control the carriage, wherein the control unit controls acceleration of the carriage such that a dynamic pressure of ink inside the supply tube becomes greater than a pressure resistance to an ink movement and a pressure resistance to an air movement in the tube.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2013
    Date of Patent: September 22, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Hiroaki Komatsu, Masaya Uetsuki, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Taku Yokozawa, Masataka Kato, Tsuyoshi Ibe, Asako Tomida
  • Patent number: 9114651
    Abstract: A recording apparatus includes: a recording unit for applying ink on a sheet by a printing head; a drying unit for drying the sheet; a measuring unit for measuring patterns on the sheet; a conveying unit for conveying the sheet; a recovering unit for performing a printing head-recovering operation; and a control unit for controlling the apparatus such that, the recording apparatus performs recording to form patterns, the conveying unit performs first conveying to convey the sheet from a recording region to a drying region, the drying unit performs drying, the conveying unit performs second conveying to convey the sheet from the drying region to a measuring region, and the measuring unit performs measuring, in sequence, wherein the recovering operation is performed at timing at least partially overlapping at least one of the first and second conveying operations, the drying operation, and the color measuring operation, after the recording operation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 5, 2013
    Date of Patent: August 25, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masataka Kato, Tsuyoshi Ibe, Masaya Uetsuki, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Taku Yokozawa, Asako Tomida, Shin Genta, Hiroaki Komatsu
  • Patent number: 9108409
    Abstract: The invention prevents inconveniences from being caused by ejection failure and unintended mixing of different colors. To this end, the invention performs preliminary ejection of ink after a wiping action to sweep mist adhering to a face of a printing head, in which an ejection opening is formed. Moreover, the amount of ink to be wastefully consumed by the preliminary ejection after the wiping is reduced. To this end, the number of preliminary ejections is regulated. The degree of adherence of mist to the ejection-opening-formed face depends on the amount of printing (the number of printed sheets, the number of ink ejections for printing, or the like). So, at the time of the preliminary ejection after the wiping, the number of ink ejections in the preliminary ejection is regulated in accordance with the amount of printing that has been done since the last wiping action.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 26, 2010
    Date of Patent: August 18, 2015
    Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Kazuo Suzuki, Kazuhiko Sato, Taku Yokozawa, Yosuke Ishii
  • Patent number: 9028021
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus includes a recording head, a carriage with the recording head mounted thereon, a main tank, a sub-tank configured to be supplied with ink from the main tank via a tube, a supply tube configured to connect the recording head and the sub-tank, a supply unit connected to the supply tube and configured to supply ink from the main tank to the sub-tank, and a control unit configured to control acceleration of the carriage and to control the supply unit, wherein, when an empty volume in the sub-tank is greater than or equal to an ink volume in the main tank, the supply unit is controlled to supply ink to the sub-tank.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2013
    Date of Patent: May 12, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masaya Uetsuki, Taku Yokozawa, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Masataka Kato, Tsuyoshi Ibe, Asako Tomida, Hiroaki Komatsu
  • Patent number: 9010903
    Abstract: An ink jet printing apparatus inhibits the temperature of a print head from increasing excessively while preventing significant density or hue unevenness from occurring in images, without the need for a complicated structure or complicated control. Thus, the temperature of the print head is detected, and the number of scans in which the print head is to stand by until start of scanning and a standby time for each of the set number of scans by the print head are set, on the basis of the detected temperature.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 28, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 21, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Taku Yokozawa, Yuhei Oikawa, Daigoro Kanematsu, Kazuo Suzuki, Satoshi Hayashi
  • Patent number: 8991959
    Abstract: A recording apparatus including a recording head that includes an element array of a plurality of recording elements for discharging a liquid, the plurality of recording elements in the element array being divided into groups, and a drive unit configured to drive the recording head in a driving mode selected from a plurality of driving modes including a continuous driving mode in which recording elements in each of the groups are driven in order from one end and a distributed driving mode in which recording elements in each of the groups are driven such that adjacent recording elements are not driven sequentially.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 11, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 31, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masaki Nitta, Hiroaki Shirakawa, Yasunori Fujimoto, Taku Yokozawa
  • Patent number: 8950843
    Abstract: There is an object of providing a printing apparatus which can restrict a variation in ejection characteristic of an ink droplet due to a temperature change of a printing head to restrict degradation in an image. The printing apparatus adjusts temperatures of the print head to first and second temperature so as to measure ejection characteristics of the print head at the first and second temperature. Then, a driving condition is generated based on the measured ejection characteristics and a printing is performed based on the measured ejection characteristics.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 26, 2010
    Date of Patent: February 10, 2015
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yuhei Oikawa, Taku Yokozawa, Kazuo Suzuki, Satoshi Hayashi
  • Patent number: 8919904
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus predicts the volume of air bubbles generated in a storage section of a recording head based on an input recording job. When the volume of the amount of ink in the storage section of the recording head is less than the predicted volume of air bubbles, a recovery operation is performed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Date of Patent: December 30, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Hiroaki Shirakawa, Yuhei Oikawa, Satoshi Hayashi, Taku Yokozawa, Masaki Nitta, Yosuke Ishii
  • Patent number: 8851613
    Abstract: A printing apparatus includes a print unit, an acquisition unit, and a setting unit. The print unit performs printing on a sheet by repeating reciprocating scans of a print head. The acquisition unit acquires information on a temperature of the print head. The setting unit sets a wait time to start a next scan after one scan. The setting unit increases the wait time by a predetermined additional time for each subsequent scan once a value acquired by the acquisition unit exceeds a first threshold, unless the value falls below a second threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 6, 2012
    Date of Patent: October 7, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Taku Yokozawa, Satoshi Hayashi, Masaki Nitta, Yosuke Ishii, Hiroaki Shirakawa, Yuhei Oikawa
  • Patent number: 8783811
    Abstract: A printing apparatus, which includes a heating unit for heating a recording medium during printing, determines a pass number for multi-pass printing based on acquired information relating to the duty in each of a plurality of regions in one band of print region. The printing apparatus sets an amount of heat of the heating unit based on the acquired information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 24, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 22, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masaki Nitta, Satoshi Hayashi, Taku Yokozawa, Hiroaki Shirakawa, Yuhei Oikawa, Yosuke Ishii
  • Patent number: 8757753
    Abstract: The present invention has an object to provide an inkjet printing apparatus that can realize both high quality image formation and improvement of a device life caused by the reduction of a mist amount of a processing liquid. The present invention is provided with a control unit that can independently control an ink ejection condition in an ink ejection unit and a processing-liquid ejection condition in a processing-liquid ejection unit. The control unit controls the ejection condition in each ejection unit so that the mist amount of the processing liquid ejected from the processing-liquid eject unit is smaller than that of the ink ejected from the ink eject unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 8, 2009
    Date of Patent: June 24, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Kazuo Suzuki, Kazuhiko Sato, Taku Yokozawa, Yosuke Ishii
  • Patent number: 8746828
    Abstract: An ink jet recording apparatus determines the timing of executing discharge recovery processing based on the discharge amount of ink for each predetermined region discharged from a recording head, and controls the discharge recovery processing to be executed at the determined timing. Thereby, the discharge performance of the ink can be kept to be good, and the discharge recovery processing can be executed at the suitable timing without producing any deterioration of the image quality of a recorded image, and with the deterioration of throughput reduced.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 10, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yutaka Kawamata, Taku Yokozawa
  • Patent number: 8628163
    Abstract: An object of the present invention is to provide a printing apparatus and a printing method even with a variation in the temperature of a print head, thus keeping the quality of images resulting from printing high. Adjustment patterns used to adjust the difference in ink ejection timing between ink ejected in a forward direction and ink ejected in a backward direction during scanning are printed at a plurality of different temperatures. Adjustment values for the ink ejection timing at the respective temperatures are selected from the adjustment patterns. Then, the correction value for the ink ejection timing is calculated from the adjustment values based on the temperature detected by the detection device. Printing is then performed with the difference in ink ejection timing between the ink ejected in the forward direction and the ink ejected in the backward direction during scanning, adjusted based on the correction value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 8, 2009
    Date of Patent: January 14, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Daigoro Kanematsu, Kazuo Suzuki, Taku Yokozawa, Satoshi Hayashi, Yuhei Oikawa
  • Patent number: 8608268
    Abstract: A recording apparatus includes a first acquisition unit configured to acquire a speed of ink discharged from a recording head, a second acquisition unit configured to acquire information relating to a speed change based on the speed acquired by the first acquisition unit and a reference speed; a setting unit configured to set driving information relating to the recording head based on the information relating to the speed change acquired by the second acquisition unit, and a drive unit configured to drive the recording head based on the driving information set by the setting unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 21, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 17, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masaki Nitta, Hiroaki Shirakawa, Yosuke Ishii, Yuhei Oikawa, Satoshi Hayashi, Taku Yokozawa
  • Publication number: 20130286065
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus includes a recording head, a carriage with the recording head mounted thereon, a main tank, a sub-tank configured to be supplied with ink from the main tank via a tube, a supply tube configured to connect the recording head and the sub-tank, a supply unit connected to the supply tube and configured to supply ink from the main tank to the sub-tank, and a control unit configured to control acceleration of the carriage and to control the supply unit, wherein, when an empty volume in the sub-tank is greater than or equal to an ink volume in the main tank, the supply unit is controlled to supply ink to the sub-tank.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 23, 2013
    Publication date: October 31, 2013
    Inventors: Masaya Uetsuki, Taku Yokozawa, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Masataka Kato, Tsuyoshi Ibe, Asako Tomida, Hiroaki Komatsu
  • Publication number: 20130286063
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus includes a recording head including a discharge port, a carriage configured to perform reciprocating scanning with the recording head mounted thereon, a main tank configured to store ink, a sub-tank configured to be supplied with ink from the main tank via a tube, a supply tube configured to connect the recording head and the sub-tank, and a control unit configured to control the carriage, wherein the control unit controls acceleration of the carriage such that a dynamic pressure of ink inside the supply tube becomes greater than a pressure resistance to an ink movement and a pressure resistance to an air movement in the tube.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 23, 2013
    Publication date: October 31, 2013
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Hiroaki Komatsu, Masaya Uetsuki, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Taku Yokozawa, Masataka Kato, Tsuyoshi Ibe, Asako Tomida
  • Publication number: 20130286078
    Abstract: A recording apparatus includes: a recording unit for applying ink on a sheet by a printing head; a drying unit for drying the sheet; a measuring unit for measuring patterns on the sheet; a conveying unit for conveying the sheet; a recovering unit for performing a printing head-recovering operation; and a control unit for controlling the apparatus such that, the recording apparatus performs recording to form patterns, the conveying unit performs first conveying to convey the sheet from a recording region to a drying region, the drying unit performs drying, the conveying unit performs second conveying to convey the sheet from the drying region to a measuring region, and the measuring unit performs measuring, in sequence, wherein the recovering operation is performed at timing at least partially overlapping at least one of the first and second conveying operations, the drying operation, and the color measuring operation, after the recording operation.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 5, 2013
    Publication date: October 31, 2013
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Masataka Kato, Tsuyoshi Ibe, Masaya Uetsuki, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Taku Yokozawa, Asako Tomida, Shin Genta, Hiroaki Komatsu
  • Publication number: 20130257933
    Abstract: An inkjet recording apparatus predicts the volume of air bubbles generated in a storage section of a recording head based on an input recording job. When the volume of the amount of ink in the storage section of the recording head is less than the predicted volume of air bubbles, a recovery operation is performed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Publication date: October 3, 2013
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Hiroaki Shirakawa, Yuhei Oikawa, Satoshi Hayashi, Taku Yokozawa, Masaki Nitta, Yosuke Ishii
  • Publication number: 20130235107
    Abstract: A color measuring method includes: recording color patterns on a sheet by an inkjet head; measuring colors of the color patterns formed on the sheet; and recovering the inkjet head, wherein the recovering is prohibited within a period after the recording and before the measuring.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 5, 2013
    Publication date: September 12, 2013
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Tsuyoshi Ibe, Masaya Uetsuki, Toshimitsu Danzuka, Taku Yokozawa, Masataka Kato, Asako Tomida, Hiroaki Komatsu, Shin Genta
  • Patent number: 8523314
    Abstract: Suitable preliminary discharge conditions are set for a recording head using reaction liquid in bidirectional recording. While the recording head makes a reciprocating motion and scans a recording medium, a preliminary discharge of the reaction liquid is executed after recording on the recording medium from discharge ports on the rear side in a direction in which the recording head travels and a preliminary discharge of ink is executed when a preliminary discharge of the reaction liquid is not executed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 16, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 3, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Kazuhiko Sato, Kazuo Suzuki, Taku Yokozawa, Yosuke Ishii