Controlling the timing of printhead nozzle firing

摘要

The firing of nozzles on rows for respective ink channels in a multi-segment printhead, each segment being a printhead chip, is effected by loading print data to respective channel shift registers on respective segments, transferring all print data in parallel to nozzle enable bits provided one per nozzle and firing the nozzles in respective channels in time independent manner using separate timing generators in each channel. Nozzles are fired by a pulse train with a programmed profile. The pulse profile is determined by programmed bits loaded to a timing generator. The programmed bits exist in tables loaded to the printhead, one for each channel. Ideally the printhead nozzle rows are in offset pairs for each channel and firing of the offset pairs is by out of phase pulse trains.