Image forming apparatus, droplet discharge detecting method in the image forming apparatus, and computer program product

摘要

An image forming apparatus includes: a droplet discharging head that includes nozzle rows; a light emitting unit that irradiates a droplet with laser light emitted in a direction intersecting a discharging direction of the droplet; a light-receiving unit that receives scattered light scattered when the droplet is irradiated by the laser light and outputs a signal corresponding to an amount of the scattered light; and a droplet discharge detecting unit that detects a droplet discharging status of the nozzles based on the signal. The laser light is emitted with an optical axis shifted from middle between two adjacent nozzle rows; and the droplet discharge detecting unit selects two nozzles adjacent in a direction intersecting the nozzle rows as detection target nozzles, and detects the droplet discharging status of the detection target nozzles based on the scattered light scattered when droplets are simultaneously discharged from the detection target nozzles.

主权项

1. An image forming apparatus comprising:
a droplet discharging head that includes a plurality of nozzle rows, each of the plurality of nozzle rows being formed by a plurality of nozzles; a light emitting unit configured to emit a laser light from a light emitting element in a direction substantially parallel to the plurality of nozzle rows, the direction intersecting a discharge direction of a droplet discharged from each of the plurality of nozzles of the droplet discharging head; a light-receiving unit configured to,
receive scattered light that is scattered when the droplet that has been discharged is irradiated by the laser light, andoutput a signal corresponding to an amount of the scattered light; and a droplet discharge detecting unit configured to detect a droplet discharging status of each of the plurality of nozzles based on the output signal from the light-receiving unit, wherein the laser light is emitted so that a center of an optical axis of the laser light is shifted from a center position between two adjacent ones of the plurality of nozzle rows; and the droplet discharge detecting unit is configured to,
select from the droplet discharging head two of the plurality of nozzles that are adjacent in a direction intersecting another direction of the plurality of nozzle rows, as detection target nozzles, anddetect the droplet discharging status of each of the detection target nozzles based on the scattered light that is scattered when droplets are simultaneously discharged from the detection target nozzles.