Patent ID: 8588660

Claim:
Apparatus for maintenance of ink concentration stability in a reservoir of a printing device over the course of a printing operation, the reservoir being fed by via a feeding mechanism, the apparatus comprising: a look-ahead unit configured for looking at incoming printing instruction data to determine pending ink usage, and a dynamic feed mechanism control unit, associated with said look ahead unit, to dynamically control said feeding mechanism to modify feeding of said ink particles based on said determined pending ink usage; wherein the dynamic feed mechanism control unit is configured to adjust a length of time the feeding mechanism adds solid ink particles to the reservoir in response to a level of solid ink particles in the reservoir becoming greater than or equal to a set-point level; wherein the length of time is adjusted based on what a count of a number of solid ink particle add cycles is whenever the level of the solid ink particles in the reservoir becomes greater than or equal to the set-point level; and wherein the count of the number of solid ink particle add cycles is incremented only when the level of the solid ink particles in the reservoir is less than the set-point level and the determined pending ink usaqe does not exceed a threshold level.