Patent Application
20080192078
Aspects and embodiments of the invention are recited in the appended claims.
An embodiment of the invention uses a determination of the position of marks on a substrate resulting from the breakaway of secondary ink drops from primary ink drops in the positioning of the primary drops on the substrate.
An embodiment of the invention provides a method of printing an image on a print medium comprising:
Said determining can be achieved by predicting the position of the secondary marks from data on the separation of the primary and secondary marks.
An embodiment of the invention provides a method of printing an image comprising releasing ink from a printhead to form ink marks on a medium wherein the ink is released a plurality of times to form pixels of the image on the medium, wherein each release of ink produces a primary mark on the medium at a position corresponding to an image pixel and one or more secondary marks, and from a knowledge of the position of the secondary marks the release of ink is controlled so that primary marks are not formed at positions on the medium occupied by the secondary marks.
An embodiment of the invention provides a printing system comprising: a printhead; a memory for storing data corresponding to a digital image which would result in a first pattern of firing ink jets during a printing operation; and a software product which takes the image data and produces a second pattern, different to the first pattern, of firing the ink jets during the print operation, the second pattern derived from the image data and from data related to positions at which secondary drops will fall during printing, the positions of secondary drops being used to modify the positions and/or timing of ink jet firing.
An embodiment of the invention provides a printing system comprising:
In such an embodiment said modifying comprises reducing the size and/or optical density of said primary dots.
An embodiment of the invention provides a printer comprising:
An embodiment of the invention provides a printer comprising: a printhead for ejecting ink; a support for positioning a print medium such that, in use, the print medium receives ejected ink from the printhead; and a processor for controlling the printhead, wherein,
The processor may be present as part of a printer or in a separate device, e.g. a computer, which is in communication with the printer. Control of processing operations may be performed on a single processor or distributed across more than one processor (for example partly on-printer and partly off-printer).
An embodiment of the invention provides printing means operable to produce a plurality of ink ejections such that, for at least some of the ink ejections, each ink ejection produces a primary ink dot and one or more corresponding secondary ink dots on a print medium; and processing means for instructing the printing means, wherein the processing means is configured to instruct the printing means not to produce primary dots on the medium at positions at which secondary dots are predicted to occur.
An embodiment of the invention provides a computer program product for controlling the ejection of ink from a printhead so as to form an image on a print medium, the program comprising:
Embodiments of the invention use secondary marks as valid marks, rather than artifacts, when it is possible to do so.
It should be appreciated that embodiments and aspects of the invention that are defined in a particular category (e.g. a method) then the same embodiment or aspect can also be defined as other categories (e.g. as a printing system, a printer, or a computer program product). The skilled person will understand that the features and embodiments of the invention that are described and claimed may be combined in various ways.
For the purposes of describing an embodiment of the invention a unidirectional printmode will be considered in which ink is ejected from the printhead 12 as it moves across the medium 20 in one direction (eg from left to right in the usual writing direction) but does not eject ink in the return direction (eg the right to left direction). Between the passes in which the printhead 12 ejects ink the medium 20 is normally moved in the orthogonal direction, Y, so that another line of the image may be built up on the medium 20. Embodiments of the invention may also employ other printmodes, for example a bidirectional printmode may be used in which ink is delivered from the printhead 12 when it moves in both directions across the medium 10 (eg the printhead 12 delivers ink in both the left to right direction and the right to left direction with respect to the medium 20).
The print medium 20 is a substrate on which marks can be made with ink. Examples of such substrates include, but are not limited to, paper, card, fabric, acetate and other polymer films.
The print controller 10 generally comprises a processor and a memory. As shown in
Although both
Referring to
The ink marks may be referred to by the term “dots” in this specification, for example the term “dots per inch” (dpi) as is widely used in the printing arts. The term “dot” should not be taken to necessarily imply anything about the geometry of the marks, for example the marks may not necessarily be circular.
Generally the printhead 12 is controlled to print the image using a halftoning technique. Halftoning is the transformation of a greyscale or a colour image to a pattern of small dots with a limited number of colours (eg just black dots on a white background) in order to make it printable. Halftoning makes use of the inability of the human eye to distinguish small dots (such as those made by ink marks) at a distance. In the basic case of greyscale halftoning the halftone process creates a binary pattern of small black dots on a white background. If the dots are small enough, then instead of seeing dots a viewer will have the illusion of a grey tone the darkness of which will depend on the coverage of the black dots on the background. For example, more black dots or bigger black dots will create the illusion of a darker grey. Colour halftoning uses a limited ink set (for example cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and uses a dot pattern of these colours which are printed over each other. The colour the viewer will observe will depend on what dot pattern is used.
An image may be represented or stored as, for example, 8 bit channel data in which each pixel of the image is given an 8 bit value (0 to 255) that corresponds to the tone of that pixel. Of course the image may be represented or stored as higher or lower resolution data. By way of example, a halftone algorithm may convert 8 bits per channel data (i.e. the data representing the image to be printed) to 1 or 2 bits that usually represent the number of dots of ink that will be printed. The process causes a quantisation error that is due to the loss of information caused by the conversion of 8 bit data to 1 or 2 bit data. To overcome this quantisation error another algorithm can be used to approximate different shades of colour by distributing the dots of ink over an area. The more spaced the dots over the media the lighter the colour, the more closer the dots the darker the colour. A common type of algorithm to do this is a so-called “Error Diffusion” algorithm. Other types of algorithm are also well known in the art (such as Matrix-based, Pattern and Dither algorithms). The Error Diffusion technique will be described in more detail but it is pointed out that the invention is not necessarily limited to the use of any particular type of halftoning technique.
In the Error Diffusion technique the tone value of each pixel is determined and compared to a threshold value provided by the algorithm. If the tone value exceeds the threshold then an output is generated which is the difference between the tone value and the threshold (i.e. the error). This error value is distributed (diffused) between pixels that neighbour the pixel being examined. The error value assigned to each of theses neighbouring pixels is taken into account when the algorithm decides if a drop of ink is require for that pixel. For example, to print a medium grey shade the algorithm will assign a first dot to a first pixel and then when examining the next row it will determine there is already a dot in an adjacent pixel of that row so it would not put another dot next to the first dot but possibly a dot in the next pixel thereby forming a kind of chess table pattern.
Conventional halftone algorithms that are used to control the printhead 12 make the assumption that a single ink ejection from a nozzle 14 will produce a single ink mark on the medium 20 and that the ink mark will be circular.
Some current printheads eject ink drops that have very low drop volume so that small ink marks are created. The small ink marks, which can be of the order of a few tens of micrometers (or less) in diameter, are less noticeable to the human eye and the printed image will have less graininess. Such small ink drops are affected by aerodynamic effects produced by the movement of the printhead 12 along the carriage guide 18. At high carriage speeds the mark produced by the ink drop elongates and becomes non-circular. At a little higher carriage speeds, where aerodynamic effects are stronger, the ink drops split in the air and produces separated marks on the medium 20. The separation of the marks on the medium 20 will be determined by the separation of the printhead 12 from the medium 20. In the printing arts this separation is often referred to as the “Pen to Paper Spacing” (PPS) even when a pen is not used. For the purpose of this specific description the term “PPS” should be understood to mean the distance of the end of the printhead 12 to the medium 20.
Printheads which eject drop volumes of about 4 to 6 picoliters, when used at carriage speeds higher than about 15-20 ips (inches per second) produce two separated dots of ink on the media about the same size as each other (about 2-3 picoliters in each drop). The unit of “inch per second” (ips) is approximately equivalent to 25.4 mm per second using SI units. Units of “inches per second” are used in this specification (rather than the SI equivalent unit) because they are widespreadly used in the printing arts. Similarly the unit of “dots per inch” (dpi) is used instead of the unit of “dots per millimetre”.
In one printhead that was tested, printing at a carriage speed of 40 ips and with a PPS of 1.5 mm and a drop volume of 6 picoliters, each fired drop becomes two printed marks on the medium 20, each mark having substantially the same size as each other and separated by 40 μm from each other (2 pixels away at a printing resolution of 1200 dpi).
Conventional halftone methods ignore the effect of a fired drop splitting into two or more drops and producing two or more marks on a medium. The conventional printing technique assumes that just one ink drop hits the substrate at the pixel it was intended for. The splitting off of a secondary drop is ignored when printing other pixels of a printed image. In this case the additional, secondary, marks will appear as artifacts that will degrade the quality of the printed image. The carriage speed can be reduced to avoid aerodynamic effects but this directly reduces the overall speed of the printer. If the PPS could be reduced so that the distance between the printhead 12 and the medium 20 is narrower the fired (ejected) drop would not have time to split or if it splits the main drop (30) and the secondary drop (32) would land much closer together. However, the PPS is limited by media cockle (waviness produced in the medium due to ink water absorption) and it has a minimum value to avoid the carriage 18 touching the medium 20. The PPS value for large format printers has to be even higher.
According to an embodiment of the invention a new method of printing is used that controls the firing of ink from the printhead 12 to take into account the production of secondary marks 42 on the medium 20. The method makes use of the secondary marks 42 to form pixels of the printed image. Therefore, if it is determined that a secondary mark 42 will be produced at a position on the medium 20 that corresponds to a pixel of the image then the processor controls the printhead 12 so that it does not fire ink at this position on the medium 20.
This method produces more detailed printouts whilst keeping high printer throughput.
Generally the printer 16 will eject drops 29 of the same weight/volume for each firing from a nozzle 29 of the printhead 12. However, the printhead 12 could be configured and operated so that different ink drop weights can be chosen to be fired from the same printhead. In this way different pixels can be chosen to have different sizes of ink dot. Embodiments of the invention can still be used in this scenario. For example, if it has been predicted that a secondary mark 42 is present, or will be present, at the intended location on the medium 20 for an ink injection 29, the printhead 12 can be operated to fire a smaller ink ejection 29 than it would otherwise do. Therefore the printhead 12 can either be instructed to produce a modified ink primary mark 40 or no primary ink mark at all on the medium 20 at a position where a secondary mark 42 is predicted to occur.
The method uses the realisation that the secondary marks 42 are produced at predictable positions relative to the primary marks 40 and that the size of these secondary marks 42 is also substantially regular and/or does not matter too much. Generally the distance between a primary 40 and a secondary mark 42 is substantially constant or sufficiently within a narrow distribution about a mean distance. Similarly if there is more than one secondary mark 42 for each primary mark 40 then the distance between each of these secondary marks 42 and the primary marks 40 may be different (eg see
The spacing may be determined by running a calibration routine on the printer/printing system which may, for example, be run periodically (e.g. when an ink cartridge is changed). The value of the spacing that is measured by the routine can be used rather than looking up the value from a table. Alternatively, the calibration routine may be used to give measured values of the spacing that are then used to populate or update data in a look-up table for subsequent use.
The spacing may be an experimental value that is determined from tests on a specific printer or a specific printer type with a specific set of printmode values. Such experimental values will generally be average values. Although the results of tests on a printer or printer type in a particular printmode may yield a distribution of values about an average, in general, the distribution is sufficiently narrow so that the positions of the secondary dots can be adequately predicted.
The spacing may also be determined theoretically or by a computer simulation, for example, using an equation or equations that operate on, for example, printmode parameters such as drop size, PPS and carriage speed. The spacing may also be determined by a combination of theoretically and experimental techniques, for example spacing values may be experimentally determined for a particular set of printmode values and further spacing may be calculated for other printmode values using an extrapolation technique. The spacing values may not necessarily be stored in a look-up table but may be calculated by a processor that then provides the information directly to a halftoning program.
An example implemented halftone algorithm takes account of the secondary marks using the distance between the primary and the secondary marks to calculate how to distribute the error, in an error-diffusion technique, among neighbouring pixels in the halftoning stage of the processing of the image data.
As an example, if the image data determines that two consecutive pixels in the printed image need to be filled the algorithm will only fire one drop instead of two because it predicts that the first drop will produce both a first mark 40 and a second mark 42 and both of the two consecutive pixels will be filled by the firing of a single ejection of ink. The algorithm may also use the size of the primary and secondary marks as parameters to calculate how to distribute the error amongst neighbouring pixels.
At step 110 the digital image data is sent to a processor, for example the processor of the controller 10. A halftoning algorithm is applied to the digital data to produce halftone data, for example the digital image is represented using 1 bit per channel halftone data.
A prototype computer simulation has been used for fixed parameters for one real printmode. The distance between the primary 40 and secondary 42 marks used in the simulation where obtained from a real printer using printmode parameters with a carriage speed of 40 ips, a PPS of 1.5 mm and a drop volume of 6 picoliters. The printmode was unidirectional.
At step 120, according to one technique, the halftone data is further processed to produced modified halftone data. The modified halftone data assumes that marks 40 will have satellites (i.e. secondary marks 42). In view of this some pixels are left empty because the satellites will fill them during the printing phase.
It should be noted that modifying halftone data that does not account for splitting of ink drops is only an example of a technique that can be used for producing the required halftone data that accounts for the splitting (steps 110 and 120 with reference to
It can be seen that the printed image shown in
Although examples have been illustrated in which a unidirectional printmode has been used the invention is not limited to such a printmode. For example a bidirectional printmode can be used. In this case a knowledge of which nozzle(s) 14 will fire ink when the printhead 12 is travelling in each of the two print directions can be used to predict the positions of the secondary marks 42.
Thus, while the present invention has been described in terms of preferred embodiments, it will appreciated by one of ordinary skill that the spirit and scope of the invention is not limited to those embodiments, but extends to the various modifications and equivalents as defined in the appended claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 07101375.9 | Jan 2007 | EP | regional |
