This Non-provisional application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(a) on Patent Application Ser. No(s). 092136625 filed in Taiwan on Dec. 23, 2003, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a circuit and a method of estimating a pulse frequency of nozzle in an ink-jet head, and more particularly to a circuit and a method of estimating a pulse frequency of nozzle in an ink-jet head to provide real-time pulse frequency of nozzles for the temperature control of nozzles in an ink-jet head.
2. Related Art
The printing quality of a thermal bubble ink-jet printer is closely related to the temperature control of the ink-jet head. The ink inside an ink chamber is heated into bubbles by a thermally resistive layer and then ink-jets from the nozzles. The temperature of the ink-jet head greatly influences sizes of ink drops. During the ink-jet printing, the change in the temperature of the ink-jet head causes non-uniform sizes of the ink drops, which deteriorates the printing quality. Therefore, the temperature control of the ink-jet head is very important.
A conventional method of controlling the temperature of the ink-jet head adds a thermistor as a temperature sensor to measure the change in the temperature of the ink-jet head and perform the temperature control according to the temperature change. However, the thermistor measures the temperature of the whole ink-jet head, rather than the temperature of individual nozzles. Therefore, it is hard to estimate sizes of ink drops for each nozzle, and to compensate the drop loss caused by the temperature change of the individual nozzles. This is a critical issue particularly in high-precision ink-jet applications, such as ink-jet print color filters or polymer electro-actuated illumination elements that require highly precise control of ink volume. Not only the average temperature but also the temperature change for each nozzle needs to be compensated.
In the light of manufacturing technology and cost, using a thermistor to measure each nozzle is not practical. Therefore, an approach using a percentage of each nozzle per unit time is a basis for measuring the temperature change. The higher the using frequency of the nozzle per unit time, the higher the temperature is, and vice versa. U.S. Pat. No. 4,791,435 discloses using a counter to count ink-jet pulse of each nozzle. The prior art is only applied in the time the disclosure was proposed because the number of nozzles of the conventional ink-jet head is small while the circuit of the counter is not big. However, '435 is not suitable for current ink-jet heads that have a large number of nozzles. Otherwise, the circuit for the counter must be huge.
Another approach to estimate the pulse frequency of the nozzle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. No. 5,168,284. Image data are dot-to-dot checked before being printed. Each pixel corresponds to a nozzle, and then all nozzles are summed up. This method has to ‘dot-to-dot’ check all the image data, which woks with low efficiency.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide an estimating circuit and a method of estimating pulse frequencies of nozzles of an ink-jet head, in which a new estimating mechanism is used to replace the conventional counter, and in which the circuit has a reduced area due to the characteristics of a nozzle address space circuit, which allows the application of different amounts of ink-jet heads in an ink-jet head.
In order to achieve the above and other objectives, the estimating circuit for estimating pulse frequencies of nozzles of an ink-jet head according to the invention includes a DRAM, an adder and a process control mechanism. The DRAM is used to save a plurality of the pulse frequency parameters of nozzle. The process control mechanism is used to control and save the pulse frequency parameters of nozzles. The adder is used to retrieve one pulse frequency parameters of nozzles from the process control mechanism and adds the retrieved parameter and one weighted value to update the parameter that is then saved back to the DRAM.
Each pulse frequency parameter of nozzles has an address for an address signal of each nozzle, or for an address signal of one group of nozzles. Furthermore, a multiplexer and a plurality of weighted value registers are provided. The multiplexer retrieves one weighted value from its corresponding weighted value register according to the ink-jet pulse of the ink-jet cycle. The weighted value can be adjusted according to the characteristics of the nozzle, the width of the ink-jet pulse, the width of the pre-heated pulse, the wave shape of the ink-jet pulse and the driving voltage.
With the use of the above circuit, a method of estimating pulse frequencies of nozzles in an ink-jet can be implemented. The method includes receiving ink-ink-jet cycle signals; getting a plurality of pulse frequency parameters of nozzles from a DRAM; adding one pulse frequency parameter and a weighted value for updating the pulse frequency parameter; and saving the updated the pulse frequency parameters of the nozzle back to the DRAM.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.
The present invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given herein below illustration only, and thus are not limitative of the present invention, wherein:
In
Knowing the invention being thus described, it will be obvious that the same may be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the invention, and all such modifications as would be obvious to one skilled in the art are intended to be included within the scope of the following claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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92136625 A | Dec 2003 | TW | national |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
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4791435 | Smith et al. | Dec 1988 | A |
5168284 | Yeung | Dec 1992 | A |
6517175 | Kanaya et al. | Feb 2003 | B2 |
20040070637 | Kanematsu et al. | Apr 2004 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20050134619 A1 | Jun 2005 | US |