INK DROP COMPENSATION BASED ON PRINT-DATA BLOCKS

摘要

INK DROP COMPENSATION BASED ON PRINT-DATA BLOCKS The invention relates to an ink jet printer and in particular to correcting the flight path of drops from the printer to reduce print position error on the print media. It has been found that drops as far as 30 drop positions ahead of a drop in the ink stream can have an effect on the flight path of that drop to the print media. Using a memory to store 230 compensation values to correct the flight of the drop for all possible combinations of drop patterns in the ink stream is not practical. Disclosed herein is a method and apparatus for using a smaller number of compensation values to correct the flight path for all possible combinations. This is accomplished by grouping the drops remote in position from the drop being compensated into blocks of drops and treating the entire block of drops as contributing one effect on the flight of the drop. Accordingly, drops close to the compensated drop are treated as having an individual effect on the flight path while drops remote from the compensated drop are grouped into one of more blocks and each block is treated as having a single effect on the compensated drop. BO978025