Printer Lookup Table Resolution Doubling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Increasing printer resolution while maintaining cost-effectiveness is challenging, as existing methods require significant hardware processing and increased bit rates, leading to higher costs and complexity.
Innovation Solution
A printing apparatus that utilizes a lookup table and processor to convert high-resolution image data into lower-resolution multi-bit tokens, allowing a printer with lower native resolution to produce high-quality images without substantial hardware upgrades, by using a lookup table to replace pixel windows with single tokens that control the print engine's laser modulation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If resolution doubling is performed in hardware by analyzing pixel data windows and generating P-codes at twice the normal rate, then the printer can print high-resolution images at the native resolution, but the processing of all bits in hardware increases the cost of the printer
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces hardware-based resolution doubling processing with software-based processing. Instead of using dedicated hardware circuits to analyze pixel windows and generate P-codes, the invention uses a processor to execute software that performs the same resolution doubling function, thereby reducing hardware complexity and cost while maintaining image quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses a lookup table that stores pre-computed P-codes for various pixel window patterns. Instead of computing P-codes in real-time through complex hardware processing, the system copies the appropriate P-code from the lookup table based on the current pixel window pattern, significantly simplifying the processing requirements.
2Manufacturing precision
If the horizontal resolution is kept at 1200 dpi by increasing the modulation of the laser, then high-resolution output is achieved, but 10,200 8-bit P-codes are produced for a total of 81,600 bits per pair of input rows, increasing processing requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial action by using only 4-bit P-codes instead of full 8-bit P-codes for resolution doubling. This reduces the number of bits that need to be processed and transmitted by half, while still achieving the desired resolution doubling effect through selective laser modulation based on the reduced P-code information.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach reduces the number of bits required for processing, lowering printer costs and maintaining image quality, as demonstrated by converting 1200 dpi data to 600 dpi using 4-bit tokens, resulting in fewer than one-fourth the bits needed by prior methods, with no increase in total bits used.
Implementation Method 1
a processor configured to access the lookup table to convert an image having the first dpi to the second dpi
Implementation Method 2
The P-code controls the modulation of the laser in a laser printer during a single pixel period
Implementation Method 3
two vertically adjacent pixels do not receive sufficient charge to attract toner by themselves, but the overlapping region between the two pixels does receive sufficient combined charge to attract toner
Data Source
AI summary
A printing apparatus comprises a memory storing a lookup table comprising tokens for converting image data having a first dots per inch (dpi) to image data having a second dpi. The printing apparatus comprises a processor configured to access the lookup table to convert an image having the first dpi to the second dpi, and a print engine configured to print the converted image at the second dpi.