Transverse printing control system for multiple print/cartridge printer

摘要

Ink jet printer for printing along a linear print zone with a plurality of insertable print/cartridges employs a carriage for traversing the print zone and supporting the print/cartridges with their orifice arrays mutually indexed to a carriage reference that is parallel to the direction of carriage traverse; detecting and storing the relative transverse locations of the indexed orifice arrays; and controlling the actuations of the supported print/cartridges in accordance with their detected transverse locations. A detecting and storing sub-system detects and stores inter-array spacings in the form of encoder mark-count plus intra-mark phase information. A control sub-system: (1) outputs printing information signals for the print/cartridges on the basis of the stored mark-count information; and (2) enables print/cartridge actuations in sequential orders based on the stored intra-mark phase information. These orders differ in forward and retrace printing.