Canon QY8-1360-000 BJ Cartridge Drive, Print drive control, Part 4 Technical Reference, BJC-7100

Part 4: Technical Reference BJC-7100

1.4 BJ Cartridge Drive

The BJ cartridges are driven according to the print data and control signals output by the logic board. The control signals determine the timing with which ink is ejected from the nozzles in the BJ heads and the amount of ink. These are optimized by the printer controller according to the conditions shown bellow. The control signals also stabilize the amount of ink by keeping the BJ heads at the optimum temperature.

The drive frequency is changed to 14.4kHz, 10.56kHz or 9.6kHz by print modes.

•BJ head temperature (heater board) and printer temperature

•Fluctuations in the heater characteristics of the BJ heads (head rank)

•Print mode and media being printed on

1.4.1 Print drive control

In the BJC-7100, printing is achieved by block dispersal drive, in which the three vertical rows of nozzles fire sequentially and driven alternately odd/even to minimize the concurrent firing of neighbouring nozzles.

The heat enable signal consists of a pre-pulse and main pulse. To keep the ink jetting in the optimum state, the pulse width is varied according to the internal state of the printer, such as the head rank, printer temperature, and head temperature.

The BJC-7100 uses a range of inks and, when printing on plain paper or envelopes in other than draft mode, an ink optimizer for plain paper. The ink optimizer is an almost colorless, transparent fluid.

For simplicity in this manual, we refer to the ink optimizer for plain paper simply as ink optimizer or just optimizer. We also refer to the various colored inks and the ink optimizer for plain paper simply as "inks".

4-4