Patent ID: 8915585

Claim:
A printing apparatus for printing in an ink jet method, comprising: an ink jet head for ejecting ink droplets of an ultraviolet curing type ink, which is cured by ultraviolet rays, toward a medium; a temporary curing ultraviolet light source which is an ultraviolet light source for irradiating ultraviolet rays to dots of ink formed of the ink droplets landed to the medium, the temporary curing ultraviolet light source generating ultraviolet rays for curing the dots of the ink in a temporarily cured state; an irradiation setting storage section which stores ultraviolet irradiation settings indicating irradiation settings of ultraviolet rays from the temporary curing ultraviolet light source to the medium; and a curing completion ultraviolet light source for further irradiating ultraviolet rays to the dots of the ink in the temporarily cured state to complete curing of the dots of the ink; wherein the ink jet head ejects ink droplets to the medium by performing a main scanning operation for ejecting ink droplets while moving in a preset main scanning direction, and performs a printing to the medium by a multi-pass method in which a plurality of the main scanning operations is performed for respective positions of a printing region to be printed on the medium; wherein the temporary curing ultraviolet light source irradiates ultraviolet rays to dots of the ink on the medium in each of the plurality of the main scanning operations based on the ultraviolet irradiation settings stored in the irradiation setting storage section; and wherein the irradiation setting storage section stores the ultraviolet irradiation settings which are set so that, regarding temperature of the region where the ink jet head ejects ink droplets in each of the plurality of the main scanning operations in the multi-pass method, an increasing range of temperature compared with temperature at a timing of the last main scanning operation is suppressed within a temperature rising range which dot gains of the dots of the ink are substantially the same as each other.