Patent ID: 9487028
Filing Date: 2016-11-08
CPC Classification: B41J

Claim Text:
1. A drying device comprising: a plurality of drying units, each drying unit comprising a plurality of laser light sources that are arranged two-dimensionally, and that dry ink placed on a recording medium as a result of ejecting of ink droplets from an ejecting unit by irradiating the ink with laser light; a control unit that divides the laser light sources of each drying unit into a plurality of laser light source subgroups, each having the same number of laser light sources, that are arranged in a crossing direction that crosses a feeding direction of the recording medium, and each laser light source subgroup having, as a unit of control, a plurality of the laser light sources arranged in the feeding direction of the recording medium, the control unit groups the laser light source subgroups of the drying units into rows in the feeding direction of the recording medium to form respective unit-of-control laser light source groups, and the control unit controls the drying unit using laser light irradiation profiles that are set for the respective unit-of-control laser light source groups; and a setting unit that causes the drying units to radiate laser light on a test image formed on the recording medium by ink droplets ejected from the ejecting unit using different irradiation profiles for the respective unit-of-control laser light source groups, and sets an irradiation profile that provides an evaluation result, better than or equal to a reference, of the test image as irradiated with laser light for laser light sources belonging to each of the unit-of-control laser light source groups.