| 摘要 |
A system for intermittently refilling the cartridge reservoir in an ink jet printer from an off-board ink supply tests the ink flow path prior to initiating a refill operation. Air at a pressure greater than the ink feed pressure is applied to the ink flow path to check the integrity of the system. After venting the system to the atmosphere, a slow leak check is made by closing the system, pressurizing it at the feed pressure, turning off the pressure source and, after a short interval, checking the pressure to see if the feed pressure is being maintained. If the integrity check or the slow leak test should fail, the refill operation is aborted and an indicator is set to alert an operator that intervention is required. During the interval the system is being raised from atmospheric to feed pressure, the air displacement is measured and saved as an indication of whether the amount of ink in the off-board supply exceeds a given level. As ink is being transferred into the reservoir, the ink level in the reservoir is monitored. When the ink level does not rise, or rises too slowly, the saved air displacement is used to determine whether to abort the refill operation and indicate a system problem, or set an indicator to signal that the off-board ink supply is exhausted. A controller measures the air displacement by measuring the time, or counting the number of pump strokes, required to raise the system pressure from atmospheric to feed pressure.
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