Image forming and office automation device consumable with memory

A consumable having a memory device for storing information such as usage information to be used by a the original manufacturer or re-manufacturer. The memory device can also be used to provided software updates or patches for the microcomputers within an image forming or other office automation device.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
1. Technical Field 
This invention generally relates to image forming and office automation 
devices and more particularly to a consumable for use in these devices 
which includes a memory for storing information about installation and 
exhaustion dates and consumable consumption and for updating programming 
within the devices. 
2. Background Art 
Most image forming devices, such as facsimile machines, printers and 
copiers, utilize any number of consumables, e.g. toner, ink, ribbon, 
photoconductor, developer, etc., which need to be replaced at the end of 
their lives. The service life for a consumable is generally designed by 
the manufacturer and is monitored by the print engine in which it 
operates. Optimally, near the end of the consumable's life, the print 
engine displays a message to the user on the front panel of the device or 
on a host device, such as a personal computer, concerning the status of 
the consumable. 
Because of the way in which the consumables are marketed, it is very 
difficult for the manufacturer to gather information directly from the 
operators of the consumable products concerning consumable consumption 
rates and use. More often than not, the consumable products are retailed 
through large distributors and returned directly to the manufacturer or 
re-manufacturer for recycling upon exhaustion without a return address. 
The result has been that manufacturers have had to gather information 
about product usage indirectly. For example, trying to track manufacturing 
dates and lot numbers to gather general usage information. However, this 
method is only suitable for identifying general trends since it is very 
difficult, if not impossible, to guess installation and exhaustion dates 
due to varying shelf times and the wide geographic region of product 
distribution. 
As a consequence, manufacturers have attempted to get information directly 
from the consumer by including product survey cards with the new 
consumable products. Unfortunately, the participation rates for these 
kinds of surveys are quite low in comparison to the total number of 
products sold. Historically, participation rates have been as low as 2%. 
It is very easy for the consumer to discard the survey card when the new 
consumable is installed. 
Examples of the types of consumable devices in a laser printer are: the 
toner cartridge(s); the photoconductor, typically a drum or belt; 
developer assemblies; the silicon pads on the fuser rollers; fuser 
assemblies; cleaning rollers; oiling rollers; transfer assemblies and even 
transfer belts and gear trains. Other consumables for other devices 
include such things as ribbons, ink cartridges; ink bladders; and ink 
print heads. 
Additionally, it is oftentimes desirable to provide updates to the 
programming of office automation and image forming devices to provide 
additional features, adjust operating parameters and fix software bugs. 
For instance, in one color laser printer currently on the market there are 
at least four separate microcomputers within the device. There is one 
microcomputer in the user display to gather data from the user and present 
visual display of important data to the user, there is a microcomputer in 
the print engine to control the xerographic image development process, 
there is a microcomputer which takes a desired printed page and rasterizes 
the image for transfer to the laser imaging device within the print 
engine, and finally there is another microcomputer to control access to 
and data interchange with a local area network or LAN. Likewise, with 
other image forming devices and office automation devices it may prove 
necessary to update the computer software/firmware for any of the 
microcomputers that reside within the office automation equipment. 
Currently, however, this is both difficult and expensive to accomplish 
since it is necessary to physically change out the memory device, 
typically a ROM (read only memory) of some sort. Most often, this must be 
accomplished by a service technician or an expensive factory recall. 
Presently, the communication between a host device and a printer is 
primarily "one way" in the sense that most of the information is sent from 
the host to the printer to be printed. A very limited amount of 
information, specifically a paper supply tray status bit and a toner 
cartridge low status bit, is sent from the printer to the host device. 
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide more direct communication 
with the manufacturers of the consumable components regarding the 
consumption rates, installation and exhaustion dates and other key 
information. Additionally, it would be advantageous to be able to provide 
software patches and updates to the office automation and image forming 
devices. Also, it would be advantageous to provide a robust two way 
communications link between a host device and image forming and office 
automation devices. 
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
This invention employs a memory device located on or within the consumable 
and can use software in either or both the image forming or office 
automation device and/or software in a host computer connected to the 
image forming or office automation device, for example in the print driver 
software. A communication channel interface is provided which allows the 
memory device to receive and store data from a host device such as a 
personal computer. Additionally, the communication channel can include a 
data path to the various program storage elements for the microcontrollers 
within the image forming or office automation device which the consumable 
serves. This data path allows the memory device to provide software 
updates or patches for the software programs for the microcontrollers. 
This allows device features to be added and altered and software bugs to 
be fixed without direct user intervention. A specific example, is an 
update to the color lookup tables which control generation of specific 
color shades. As toner formulations are optimized it is sometimes 
necessary to alter some or all of the electrographic printing parameters 
to take advantage of the new toner formulation. Until now, there has been 
no convenient way to do this to an image forming device already in 
service. 
The memory device is a nonvolatile memory device such as a 256 bit EEPROM, 
part number DS2430, a three wire serial memory device made by Dallas 
Semiconductor, a 1 kbit EPROM, part number DS1991, which is a one wire 
serial memory device made by Dallas Semiconductor, a 93-CS46 two wire 
serial EEPROM manufactured by National Semiconductor, a 4 kbit serial FRAM 
(ferro-ram), part number FM24C04, manufactured by Ramtron or a similar 
device. A simple and reliable electrical connection is provided between 
the consumable electronics and the image forming device which doesn't 
require any user intervention. 
By modifying the software in the host device, such as the printer driver in 
a host computer, the driver can be made to recognize a request for 
information from the image forming or office automation device. The driver 
then extracts the desired information from the host device and forwards 
this information to the memory device for storage. Likewise, the control 
software in the image forming and office automation devices can be 
modified to both generate these requests and to recognize a request from 
the host device for information about the various consumables or query for 
information stored in the consumables' memories. Additional modifications 
may be necessary to the communication protocols to accommodate the 
requests. In the case of an image forming device, it is convenient to 
provide support for the requests in either the POSTSCRIPT (POSTCRIPT is a 
trademark of Adobe) printer language or the PCL (PCL is a trademark of 
Hewlett-Packard) printer language. 
For example, using the bidirectional Centronics printer connection, the 
printer driver software or even application software can generate one or 
more pieces of information to be stored within the consumable memory which 
can then be accessed at a later time by the consumable re-manufacturer. 
This information can contain usage rate information, for example, which 
can be used to tailor future product development to better serve the end 
user. In addition to usage rate information, information such as the 
installation date, print densities of print jobs, host computer type, 
operating system, number of consumables consumed since purchase date, 
number of pages printed since last consumable, average consumable life, 
consumable manufacturing codes, warranty prorating information, user 
preference settings, etc. can be stored to help manufacturers gather key 
information more accurately and easily as well as providing a tightly 
coupled device/host package resulting in easier use by the consumer. 
The software updating feature is triggered at the time of consumable 
replacement by detecting the installation of the consumable. This can be 
accomplished a number of different ways. One way is to simply compare a 
version number or manufacturing date for the new consumable with a 
previously stored version number or manufacturing date of the old 
consumable. If the newly installed consumable has a newer version number, 
an installation date is requested from the host device and stored in the 
consumable memory. Additionally if the new consumable memory contains a 
code patch, an updating routine in the programming of the image forming 
device is activated and the code patch is uploaded from the consumable 
memory into a programmable memory in the image forming device. The version 
number of the consumable memory device is also updated in the image 
forming device for future comparison with other newly installed 
consumables. The consumable memory and host device continue to interact 
throughout the life of the consumable to store user information, usage 
information and can even continue to modify the programming in the image 
forming device should conditions change.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
Referring now to the figures, an image forming device 10 is shown in 
schematic representation in FIG. 1 connected to a host device 20 by a 
standard bidirectional communications printer cable. While this 
representation is indicative of a laser type printer it should be 
understood that the invention is not so limited and is applicable to other 
image forming devices and office automation devices such as facsimile 
machines, thermal printers, impact printers, ink jet printers and 
virtually any other kind of device which uses expendable components to 
create the images. The laser printer example has been adopted for the sake 
of convenience and understanding only. Hence, any references to a laser 
printer, printing device or other specific printer references are intended 
to refer and apply to the broad categories of image forming devices and 
office automation devices which employ expendable components, broadly 
referred to as consumables. 
Image forming device 10 includes a housing 11 to house its various 
electronic components. In general terms, those electronic components 
include a print engine 12, a printer controller 13, a formatter 14 and an 
input 15 for receiving data to be printed. In the case of a document 
printer such as a laser printer, print engine 12, which is the device that 
actually affixes the image to the print media, fixes or fuses one or more 
toner components to the print media to create the image. Printer 
controller 13 provides the supporting electronic control for the print 
engine and provides an interface to the print engine. In the case of a 
laser print engine, printer controller 13 generally modulates the laser 
for photoconductor exposure, sets the relative bias voltages and fuser 
temperatures, etc. Additionally, printer controller 13 usually monitors 
the status of the various consumable components within image forming 
device 10. By way of example, a toner level sensor within toner cartridge 
18 will generate a toner low signal when the level of toner within toner 
cartridge 18 falls below a specific level. This signal is interpreted by 
print controller 13 and the appropriate action taken. 
The first embodiment of the invention has a simple storage element or 
memory device 19, such as an EEPROM, affixed to or within the housing of a 
consumable device such as toner cartridge 18 along with specially 
configured software or programming within printer controller 13. Other 
nonvolatile memory devices will also work such as a battery backed SRAM 
which advantageously allow both reading and writing the memory device. The 
programming within printer controller 13 detects both when a new 
consumable is installed and an end of life notification event for the 
consumable. The detection of these events can be triggered in many 
different ways. For instance, to detect when a new toner cartridge has 
been installed a single shot fuse can be employed which blows at the first 
use of the cartridge after installation. Alternatively, the removal and 
replacement of a consumable can trigger a comparison of a previously 
stored consumable identification number, i.e. stored outside of memory 
device 19 in the image forming computer or the engine control computer, 
with the identification number of the newly installed consumable. A 
difference in the identification numbers indicates that the consumables 
have changed and most likely a new consumable has been installed. 
A second variation of the first embodiment has the programming or software 
residing in printer driver software 21 within host 20. In this embodiment, 
printer driver software 21 extracts the status of the consumable and 
updates the consumable status and date information in memory 19 with every 
print job. 
FIG. 2 shows one possible memory segmentation scheme for memory device 19. 
Memory segment 19a provides storage space for the date of manufacture for 
the consumable. Memory segment 19b provides storage space for usage data 
such as the number of printed pages that the consumable has been in 
operation, amount of toner or ink remaining, etc. Memory segment 19c 
provides storage space for calibration data for use by the image forming 
device over the life of the consumable such as the toner to carrier ratio 
and sensor calibration data. Memory segment 19d provides space for storing 
other information such as usage information, paper types, requested print 
densities or any other data pertinent to the printing process. Memory 
segment 19e provides storage space for software and/or firmware patches to 
update the software in the image forming device and may include new lookup 
tables such as the color lookup tables. This feature forms the basis for 
the second embodiment of the invention. 
In most image forming devices there are a number of microcomputers 30 each 
controlling a different function with the image forming device. For 
example, there may be a separate microcomputer in the user display to 
gather data from the user and present visual display of important data to 
the user; a separate microcomputer in the print engine to control the 
xerographic image development process; a separate microcomputer which 
takes a desired printed page and rasterizes the image for transfer to the 
imaging device within the print engine; and a separate microcomputer to 
control access to and data interchange with host device or a local area 
network. 
FIG. 3 illustrates a typical arrangement for one of the controlling 
microcomputers within an image forming device. A intracomputer 
communications bus 34 serves to connect two or more internal 
microcomputers. Each microcomputer may have several different kinds of 
memory devices dedicated for its use. Here, microcomputer 30 has a random 
access memory (RAM) device 31, a read only memory (ROM) device 32 and a 
electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM) device 33 
connected in parallel, for the sake of illustration, by a data bus 35, 
address bus 36 and a read/write enable line 38. Separate select lines 37 
are provided between microcomputer 30 and each of the memory devices. 
Normally, factory instructions for microcomputer 30 are programmed into 
ROM 32 at the time of manufacture which implement the functionality for a 
particular microcomputer 30. 
However, should it become necessary or desirable to update the instructions 
for a microcomputer 30, a software patch stored in memory segment 19e of 
consumable memory device 19 can be uploaded into EEPROM 33. A flag bit, an 
instruction address lookup table or another similar scheme in EEPROM 33 
can is used by microcontroller 30 to indicate that alternative 
instructions are available in EEPROM 33 rather than the original 
instructions in ROM 32. In this manner, whole new features can be 
introduced into an existing product by the user when they replace a used 
consumable with a new one having an updated consumable memory device 19. 
A variation of the second embodiment uses a ROM device for consumable 
memory device 19, providing only the software patch function and 
eliminating the ability of the device to store usage data for reclamation 
at the time of recycling or re-manufacture. 
In both the first and second embodiments of the invention, consumable 
memory device 19 and corresponding supporting software in controller 13, 
formatter 14, firmware 17, host device 20 and/or printer driver 21 provide 
a two way communication between a consumable and the host device enabling 
manufacturers to both collect data from a recycled consumable when it is 
returned to the factory and to provide updated printer control information 
to an existing product in use in the field without a service call. 
FIGS. 4-6 graphically illustrate one implimentation, with variations, of 
the software portion of the invention as it may be implemented in a print 
control computer (such as printer controller 13), an image processing 
computer (such as formatter 14) and a host device driver. Other 
modifications include providing an Internet or BBS link to provide an 
additional of bidirectional communication with an image forming device to 
transfer code patches, usage and statistical information as well as 
informing the user of new features. 
While there is shown and described the preferred embodiment of the 
invention, it is to be distinctly understood that this invention is not 
limited thereto but may be variously embodied to practice within the scope 
of the following claims.