Chapter 2
The caps are activated to protect the nozzle assembly on capping. When the carriage moves to the home position , the caps are elevated by the cap can that is driven by the capping motor, capping the nozzle assembly to protect it.
These caps cap the nozzle assembly to suck inks from the printhead by means of the suction pump.
Wiper unit
Glycerin tank | Carriage lockpin |
Pump cam sensor
Purge motor | Cap |
Pump encoder
b) Wipers
The wipers are driven by the purge motor to wipe the six trains of nozzles in the nozzle assembly in the printhead simultaneously.
A pair of wiper blades are in position to ensure wiping performance. The wiping operation operates on a slide wiping basis, sliding the wiper blades via wiper cams through the normal rotation normal of the purge motor.
Wiping is executed by the wiper blades moving at a constant speed to the front of the printer after the end of a print or suction operation.
A wiper blade set perpendicularly to the head wipes the entire face of the printhead, followed by a narrower blade wiping the nozzle assembly. The wiper blades are cleaned before they are replaced at the wiping position after wiping to preserve wiping performance.
Wiper blade cleaning is carried out by scraping off the inks that have been wiped off from the head with an ink scraper linked to the maintenance cartridge, then wiping the blades with a blade cleaner.
Wet wiping is carried out for added wiping removal performance, whereby the wiper blades are moistened with glycerin as they are pressed against an absorber impregnated with glycerin. The quantity of glycerin used is managed by counting the number of times the wiper blades have been pressed against the absorber. When this count falls to equal any of the following values, either a replacement warning (continued print available) or replacement required indication (service call error) is issued.
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Display | Times |
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Replacement warning indication | 71,250 times |
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Service calls | 75,000 times |
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Glycerin | Ink scraper | |
absorber | ||
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Glycerin tank
Printhead
Wiper blades
Blade holder
Wiper cam
Cap
c) Pump
The pump (suction pump) is a tube pump that pressurizes the ink tubes with rotating rollers to generate a negative pressure for sucking inks. A single tube is sequentially pressurized by a pair of rotating rollers to control the level of ink suction by a wide margin.
The timing at which the rotating rollers rotate is detected by the pump cam sensor, with the distance of rotation being controlled by the driving of the purge motor.
