Ink jet printing apparatus and method for improved accuracy of ink droplet placement

摘要

Ink jet printing apparatus and method for improved accuracy of ink droplet placement on a receiver medium (30) by compensating for jet direction variabilities between ink nozzles (45). More specifically, the invention is an ink jet printing apparatus and method for printing an output image on a receiver medium in response to an input image file having a plurality of pixels. The apparatus includes a print head (50) and a nozzle integrally attached to the print head. The nozzle has a droplet placement characteristic, for example, undesired placement of the droplet on the receiver medium, associated therewith. A waveform generator (230) associated with the nozzle generates an electronic waveform (80) comprising a plurality of electronic pulses (90) to be supplied to the nozzle for adjusting the droplet placement characteristic. In this manner, the invention compensates for the undesired droplet placement characteristic, so that the droplet (47) is accurately placed on the receiver medium irrespective of physical variabilities between nozzles.