In a print head, a plurality of ejection ports for ejecting metallic ink, including a solvent and particles for imparting a metallic gloss, are arranged in a predetermined direction. A plurality of printing scans are performed to the same area of the print medium to print an image on the print medium. In the printing scan, the metallic ink being ejected from the print head to a print medium while moving the print head in a scanning direction intersecting the predetermined direction. At least one of the plurality of printing scans is set as a first scan having a higher print ratio than the other printing scans.

A drawing device includes a drawing head and a processor which controls the drawing head. The drawing head draws an image by forming at least one of a first droplet dot formed by a first droplet and a second droplet dot formed by a second droplet including a larger droplet amount than the first droplet on a drawing target surface curved convexly along a first direction. The processor controls the drawing head to form the second droplet dot in at least a part of an adjustment region in at least one end of ends in the first direction on the drawing target surface based on drawing data of the image, and the drawing data is image data for drawing the image on a non-curved surface.

An ink printing process employs per-nozzle droplet volume measurement and processing software that plans droplet combinations to reach specific aggregate ink fills per target region, guaranteeing compliance with minimum and maximum ink fills set by specification. In various embodiments, different droplet combinations are produced through different print head/substrate scan offsets, offsets between print heads, the use of different nozzle drive waveforms, and/or other techniques. Optionally, patterns of fill variation can be introduced so as to mitigate observable line effects in a finished display device. The disclosed techniques have many other possible applications.

A liquid discharge apparatus includes a liquid discharger, a curing device, a multi-scanning device, and processing circuitry. The multi-scanning device causes the discharger to relatively scan a non-permeable recording medium multiple times in each of two intersecting directions to form an image that includes pixels with different discharge amounts of an active energy ray curable liquid in a region of the medium. The circuitry generates thinned image data for forming the image for each relative scanning in a first direction, using a mask in which pixels allowing image formation are arrayed. The circuitry generates the thinned data such that a spatial frequency of an array of the pixels allowing image formation in the mask for a first discharge amount is uniform in relative scanning in a second direction and the spatial frequency for a second discharge amount decreases toward a downstream side in the relative scanning in the second direction.

Techniques are presented for digital ink jet printing upon a substrate with a significant third dimension. Droplets in the range of 120 pL to 200 pL have been found suitable for substrates with variability, in the third dimension, of up to approximately 4 cm. A larger droplet can be generated by utilizing a plurality of drive pulses, each of which generates a smaller droplet, and having the plurality of smaller droplets combine in mid-air. The data to be printed can be derived from a 3D model and such 3D model can also be used to guide shaping of the substrate. The 3D model can be produced from 2D image data. If the 2D image data is a two-dimensional portrait photograph, a result, of using the present invention, can be a realistic portrait in the form of a bas-relief sculpture.

A liquid discharging apparatus includes a head unit arranged in a main scanning direction includes head arrays each having nozzles discharging liquid are arranged in a sub scanning direction, a moving unit that alternately performs a main scanning operation while discharging the liquid and a sub scanning operation causing the head unit or the recording medium to move in the sub scanning direction without discharging the liquid, and a gradation setting unit that sets a first pattern setting a gradation to increase a center printing ratio at a center and decrease an end printing ratio at both ends for a whole area of the head array in the sub scanning direction and a second pattern in which a gradation is set so as to increase the printing ratio setting a gradation to increase the center printing ratio and decrease the end printing ratio for an arbitrary number of the heads.

An ink jet process is used to deposit a material layer to a desired thickness. Layout data is converted to per-cell grayscale values, each representing ink volume to be locally delivered. The grayscale values are used to generate a halftone pattern to deliver variable ink volume (and thickness) to the substrate. The halftoning provides for a relatively continuous layer (e.g., without unintended gaps or holes) while providing for variable volume and, thus, contributes to variable ink/material buildup to achieve desired thickness. The ink is jetted as liquid or aerosol that suspends material used to form the material layer, for example, an organic material used to form an encapsulation layer for a flat panel device. The deposited layer is then cured or otherwise finished to complete the process.

A recording device includes a recording head (a printing head) with multiple nozzles arranged therein to discharge droplets (ink droplets) onto a recording medium (a printing medium), and a recording controller (a printing controller) configured to control recording of a recording image, the recording including moving the recording head relative to the recording medium while the droplets are discharged. The recording controller is configured to control the recording for pixel data of the recording image that have a prescribed gray scale value or larger under conditions that a nozzle duty corresponding to the number of nozzles, included in the multiple nozzles and being able to discharge the droplets per unit area on the recording medium, is smaller than or equal to an upper limit value and that a discharge amount of the droplets discharged per the unit area is variable.

A surface tension difference between a first ink and a third ink is smaller than a surface tension difference between the first ink and a second ink. A first gradation value for the first ink is quantized to generate a first quantized value, a second gradation value for the second ink is quantized to generate a second quantized value, and a third gradation value for the third ink is quantized to generate a third quantized value. The above quantization processing is performed such that, in a predetermined pixel region, the number of pixels for each of which the second quantized value and the third quantized value both indicate printing is greater than the number of pixels for each of which the first quantized value and the third quantized value both indicate printing.

An ink printing process employs per-nozzle droplet volume measurement and processing software that plans droplet combinations to reach specific aggregate ink fills per target region, guaranteeing compliance with minimum and maximum ink fills set by specification. In various embodiments, different droplet combinations are produced through different print head/substrate scan offsets, offsets between print heads, the use of different nozzle drive waveforms, and/or other techniques. Optionally, patterns of fill variation can be introduced so as to mitigate observable line effects in a finished display device. The disclosed techniques have many other possible applications.