A billing method for a liquid jet device includes, counting a consumed amount of liquid by printing, counting the number of printed sheets, counting a consumed amount of liquid for maintenance of a jet head, calculating a maintenance consumption amount per unit number of sheets, from a maintenance consumption amount consumed in current maintenance, and the number of printed sheets for which printing is performed from previous maintenance to the current maintenance, setting, as a liquid consumption amount, a value obtained by adding the maintenance consumption amount per unit number of sheets, to a print consumption amount consumed in printing for the unit number of sheets, and billing for printing for the same number of sheets as the number of printed sheets performed after the current maintenance, in accordance with the liquid consumption amount.

A plurality of test patterns are printed with different print conditions, the test patterns each being formed by two inks out of a plurality of inks and a reaction liquid and including a plurality of patterns among which ejection positions of the reaction liquid relative to ejection positions of the two inks are displaced by a predetermined amount at a time. The optical properties of the respective test patterns printed on the print medium are detected. A displacement amount of the relative ejection positions of the reaction liquid from the ejection positions of the plurality of inks is obtained based on the optical property of the test pattern in which an optical density difference between the patterns in the test pattern is greater than a predetermined value and which has an optical density of a lowest level among the optical properties of the test patterns detected.

A method of additively manufacturing parts by selectively cooling a liquefied thermoplastic material.

Provided is a printing method for performing printing using a serial printer. In printing of a print image including a line image, the printing method includes a raster line forming step of forming each of raster lines configuring the image, by a plurality of pass operations. In the formation of each of the raster lines, when printing of a region corresponding to edge pixels of the line image by a first pass operation, which is one of the plurality of pass operations, is first printing, and printing of the region corresponding to the edge pixels by a second pass operation that is different from the first pass operation, of the plurality of pass operations, is second printing, a brightness of the printing by the second printing is higher than a brightness of the printing by the first printing.

An image forming apparatus includes: a nozzle head in which nozzles that ejects ink is arranged in a first direction; a moving mechanism that moves a recording medium relative to the nozzle head; an image acquirer that acquires image data; a quantization processor that quantizes density of pixels forming an image based on the image data; a grouping processor that groups adjacent pixel positions into one group in the quantized data; and a rearrangement processor that rearranges a quantized pixel value at each pixel position in the group that is grouped, wherein the grouping processor groups such that a direction intersecting the first direction is set to a second direction, arrangement of groups in the first direction is set to a row, rows is arranged in the second direction, and a row in which an initial position of the row is different at least by one pixel is included.

There is provided a printing apparatus including an obtaining unit configured to obtain print data in which in imposition image data in which one or more images are imposed in a print region, a code for identifying each image in the imposition image data is embedded; a determination unit configured to determine an ink color to be used to print the code by excluding an ink color satisfying a predetermined condition from candidates for the ink color to be used to print the code; and a print control unit configured to print the code based on the print data obtained by the obtaining unit using a plurality of nozzle arrays for the ink color determined by the determination unit.

A printing system includes a printing unit, a position determiner that randomly determines a position where a first information code is to be set, a modifier that modifies print data for printing an image, the first information code, and a positional information code having recorded therein positional information at the time of printing that indicates the position determined by the position determiner so that the first information code is set at the position determined by the position determiner, an acquirer that acquires the position of the first information code on a print medium as positional information and acquires the positional information at the time of the printing from the positional information code, and a determiner that determines whether the printing result is a falsified matter based on comparison of the positional information after the printing with the positional information at the time of the printing.

A method for printing documents with security elements carried out by two separate, computer-supported systems. The computer-supported systems each have a printing system with a printing machine and a security system that perform steps of preparing a document with placeholders for the security elements in the image data by the computer of the security system, and transmitting the document to the printing system. The image data is converted into an output color space of the printing machine by the computer of the printing system, and the document is transmitted to the security system. The security elements are generated, and replacement of the placeholders with the security elements by the computer of the security system is performed. The document is transmitted to the printing system. The finished document is printed with the security elements by the printing machine of the printing system.

A droplet ejection apparatus including a droplet deposition head, actuating circuitry and head controller circuitry. The droplet deposition head having an array of actuating elements and a corresponding array of nozzles. The actuating circuitry applies drive waveforms to the actuating elements causing the ejection of fluid in the form of droplets through the array of nozzles and onto deposition media, which are moved relative to the droplet deposition head. The head controller circuitry is configured to receive an input set of ejection data, generate a series of sub-sets of ejection data based on the input set, and send the series of sub-sets of ejection data to the actuating circuitry. The actuating circuitry is further configured so as to, for each sub-set of ejection data, apply drive waveforms to the actuating elements such that they repeatedly eject droplets from one or more nozzles, thus depositing successive rows of droplets. The one or more nozzles and the sizes of the droplets ejected therefrom are determined by the current sub-set of ejection data. Each of the one or more nozzles ejecting droplets with a substantially constant frequency of 1/T. The apparatus is further configured to receive deposition media speed data, which indicates the current speed of relative movement of the head with respect to the deposition media. The apparatus is further configured such that the head switches from ejecting droplets in accordance with a current sub-set of ejection data to ejecting droplets in accordance with a consecutive sub-set of ejection data in the series at a time determined in accordance with the media speed data, with the time interval between starting ejecting droplets in accordance with successive sub-sets of ejection data varying inversely with the current speed of relative movement of the droplet deposition head.

Printing methods and devices identify distortable ink colors in a print job. These distortable ink colors interact with one another when printed in the same printing pass on the same area of a sheet. These methods and devices control printheads and sheet feeders to separately print the distortable ink colors in different print passes.