Disclosed is a portable, hand-held printing apparatus capable of maintaining high printing quality even when the movement of the apparatus becomes unstable due to looseness or wrinkles of a printing medium or even when the moving velocity of the apparatus changes. When a user moves the housing of this apparatus on a printing medium to print on the printing medium by using a printhead, the apparatus itself detects the moving velocity of the housing. On the basis of this detection result, the apparatus adjusts the supply timing of a driving signal for driving the printhead.
A printhead includes plural print elements grouped in blocks. The blocks are selected by a block selection unit to which an initial value is inputted. The initial value is kept in a memory unit, and the blocks are autonomously and periodically selected by the initial value kept in the memory unit. The initial value is variable, and the block selection unit changes the order of selected blocks using the changed initial value. Thus, displacement in the main scanning direction resulting from the periodically selected blocks can be eliminated.
A capping system for a printhead includes a handheld printjet printing device having a printhead and a cap including a flexible wiper. The cap is structured to be manually placed on the printing device so that the wiper wipes the printhead during placement thereon.
A capping device seals against a print chip (12) of a printhead (11) fixed within a housing (10) of a hand-held portable printer. The capping device can be moved manually by a user or automatically by internal mechanisms to reveal the print chip for printing. The capping device includes a capper arm (13) with an activating region (15) and a perpendicular leg (28) with an elastomeric pad (16) that seals against the chip (12). The capping device can be moved by mechanisms such as a fulcrum or pivot point (14), a friction clutch (19) with peg (20), an eccentric cam (23) or an internal solenoid (26). The capper arm can be formed of a resilient, elastically deformable material such as metal or plastics. In a non-printing mode, the capping device seals the print chip to prevent evaporation of ink, drying or blockages.
In a printing apparatus which prints by serial scanning, a control command and image data formed from a plurality of rasters as a unit that are received from a connected host apparatus are stored in a reception buffer. Whether to perform marginless printing of printing on the entire surface of a printing medium is determined on the basis of information on the size of image data and information on the size of the printing medium that are contained in the control command. When marginless printing is performed, the amount of unnecessary image data is calculated by using a plurality of rasters as a unit on the basis of the length of the printing medium in the conveyance direction and the length of the image data in the conveyance direction. The printing start position of the printing medium in the conveyance direction is aligned by a distance corresponding to the number of rasters as a remainder of the calculation. Accordingly, the start position of marginless printing on the printing medium in the conveyance direction can be accurately controlled when marginless printing is executed.
An ink jet printer that includes a printhead configured to eject ink. The printhead is housed in a housing. A capping device is pivotally fastened with respect to the housing to be pivotal into and out of capping engagement with the printhead. The mechanism includes an arm pivotally mounted with respect to the housing and a capping leg extending transversely from the arm to cap the printhead.
