A printing apparatus includes a head including a plurality of nozzles configured to discharge liquid to a medium, an abnormal nozzle detection unit configured to detect an abnormal nozzle having a discharging defect among the plurality of nozzles, a contact detection unit configured to detect contact between the head and the medium, a suction unit configured to perform an ejection operation of ejecting the liquid from the plurality of nozzles, and a control unit. The control unit executes a suction operation when the abnormal nozzle is detected and the contact between the head and the medium is detected, and the control unit executes a printing of complementing the abnormal nozzle when the abnormal nozzle is detected and the contact between the head and the medium is not detected.

A recording device includes a recording head in which a plurality of nozzle rows are arranged in a predetermined direction that include a first nozzle row including a plurality of nozzles for ejecting ink having a predetermined color, and a second nozzle row including a plurality of nozzles for ejecting ink having an identical color to the predetermined color, and a control unit configured to control ejection of ink by the nozzle, wherein the control unit, when a test pattern for an inspection of a missing dot due to an ejecting defect of the nozzle is recorded on a recording medium, records a dot pattern, that is an individual element that forms the test pattern, so that ink ejected from a nozzle of the first nozzle row, and ink ejected from a nozzle of the second nozzle row overlap.

An inspection module is disclosed for inspecting a droplet from an ink jet head. The inspection module includes a sensor located under the ink jet head and measuring a distance between the droplet and the sensor in real time; a variable lens changing an operating distance based on the measured distance of the sensor; and a camera for capturing an image of the droplet. The inspection module further includes a droplet inspecting part inspecting the droplet image captured by the camera.

A printing system is disclosed. The printing system includes at least one physical memory device to store nozzle correction logic and one or more processors coupled with at least one physical memory device to execute the nozzle correction logic to receive a uniformity compensated transfer function for each of a plurality of pel forming elements, receive an average missing neighbor transfer function, receive a defective nozzles list including one or more of the plurality of pel forming elements indicated as defective during print production; and perform missing neighbor processing by applying the average missing neighbor transfer function associated with the pel forming element determined to be a neighbor of a defective pel forming element.

A producing method for a print by a printing system including a printing device that is manually moved with respect to a medium to perform printing on the medium, the producing method including the printing system determining whether a print plan size of a print image is a one-pass printable size, which is a size printable in one pass by the printing device, and, when it is determined that the print plan size is not the one-pass printable size, the printing device printing the print image in the one pass.

A printing apparatus includes a printing head including a nozzle configured to discharge a dot of a first size and a dot of a second size smaller than the first size, the dots being ink dots, and a control unit configured to control the printing head to print, on a printing medium, a test pattern for inspecting a state of ink discharge by the nozzle. The test pattern includes a first pattern element formed by a plurality of the dots of the first size and a second pattern element formed by a plurality of the dots of the second size. The control unit causes the printing head to print the test pattern where a number of the dots of the second size forming the second pattern element is greater than a number of the dots of the first size forming the first pattern element.

A method includes, receiving a first digital image (FDI) to-be printed by a digital printing system (DPS) (10). In a in training phase: for first selected regions (111) in the FDI, a first set of synthetic images (SIs) (112A, 112B, 114A, 114B, 116A, 116B) having a defect caused by a defective part (DP) (99) in the first selected regions, is produced; a neural network (NN) (150) is trained to detect the defect using the first set SIs. In a subsequent detection phase: the NN is applied for identifying, in a second digital image (SDI) (136, 146) acquired from an image produced by the DPS, suspected second regions (135, 145); for each of the second regions, a second set (137, 147) of SIs having DPs that form the defects, is produced; and the DP is identified by comparing, in each of the second regions, between the SDI and the second set SIs.

A test image printer of an inkjet printer causes a test image, including a mark with a predefined shape and usable to correct an image captured by an image capturing device, and a test pattern usable to inspect a plurality of nozzles, to be printed on a recording medium. An image capture controller controls the image capturing device to capture an image of the test image printed on the recording medium. A corrector compares the image of the mark captured by the image capturing device, to the predefined shape of the mark, to calculate a correction value, and corrects the image of the test pattern, captured by the image capturing device, based on the calculated correction value. An inspector inspects the plurality of nozzles based on the image of the test pattern corrected by the corrector.

A liquid discharge apparatus includes a print head discharging a liquid and a control circuit controlling an operation of the print head. the print head includes a connector having a first terminal, a second terminal, a third terminal, and a fourth terminal, a first integrated circuit, a circuit substrate on which the connector and the first integrated circuit are provided and which has first wiring, second wiring, third wiring, fourth wiring, fifth wiring, and sixth wiring, and a first wiring substrate, in which the first wiring electrically couples the first terminal and the first integrated circuit to each other, the fifth wiring electrically couples the first terminal and the first integrated circuit to each other, and the sixth wiring electrically couples the first integrated circuit and the first wiring substrate to each other.

Systems and methods are provided for. One embodiment is a system that includes an interface configured to receive an image of media printed on with print data, and memory configured to store defect reference data of nozzles belonging to printheads of a printer. The system also includes a print defect controller configured to detect a nozzle defect in the image based on a comparison of the image with the print data, and to determine a type of the nozzle defect based on a comparison of the nozzle defect with the defect reference data.