PRINTING APPARATUS AND ITS CLEANING MECHANISM

摘要

The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a cleaning mechanism thereof. A capping unit (302) includes a plurality of caps (301). Among the caps (301), a separate cleaning cap (301a) is connected by a tube (314) having a second valve (312) to a pump (310) for sucking ink from inkjet heads (101). Other caps are connected to the pump (310) by a tube (313) having a first valve (311). At the time of steady state, the first valve (311) and the second valve (312) are kept open to suck ink from all the inkjet heads (101). At the time of occurrence of defective ejection, only the second valve (312) is kept open to suck ink only from an inkjet head (101) having an ejection defect.