| 摘要 |
An ink expelling restoring device and method capable of reliably restoring the ink-expelling restoring capability of an ink jet type recording head and coping with the case where the ink supply is exhausted during the ink-expelling restoring process. The inventive ink-expelling restoring device for an ink jet printer includes a capping member for capping the front face of a recording head, an ink-residual quantity detector for checking the residual quantity of ink, and blade member for wiping the front face of the recording head. The ink expelling capability restoring operation is carried out by a sequence of a wiping operation, ink-suction operation, and flushing operation. The residual-quantity detector checks the residual quantity of ink during the operation of restoring the ink-expelling capability. When the residual quantity of ink is smaller than a preset quantity, the ink suction operation is stopped. The recording head is capped with the capping member after the flushing and wiping operations. With such a construction, when a small quantity of ink is left in the ink container during the ink-expelling restoring process, the ink suction is stopped, preventing useless consumption of ink.
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