Importance

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Abstract

Carriage jams in a printer are detected by monitoring a centrally mounted home flag sensor. The flag is molded integral with, or attached to the print head carriage. An interruptive optical sensor is secured to the printer mechanism and positioned to straddle the carriage flag and relatively in the center of print field as the carriage is driven back and forth across the printer. The printer controller uses this sensor's signals to place the print head in a home position when the printer is turned on. This sensor's signals are also used to detect a carriage jam condition. A jam detection method is performed with each pass of the carriage through the sensor to detect carriage position errors and jams that may result in data loss, illegible documents, misaligned print, document destruction, or damage to printer components.

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First Claim