Patent ID: 7367660

Claim:
An ink-jet recording apparatus comprising: a recording head that has an internal sub-tank for storing ink, and records an image on a recording medium by ejecting ink inside the sub-tank from an injection nozzle; a carriage that has the recording head mounted thereon, and can move to and fro in a direction orthogonal to a conveying direction of the recording medium; a main tank that stores ink supplied to the sub-tank; an ink supply member that supplies ink inside the main tank to the sub-tank; a relative position changer that can change a relative position between the ink supply member and the sub-tank; the sub-tank including an ink supply opening that can be attached to/detached from the ink supply member and through which the ink inside the main tank is supplied, and an air communication hole that communicates an inside of the sub-tank with the atmosphere, the ink supply member including an ink supply nozzle that can be attached to/detached from the ink supply opening, and an open/close state switching member that switches an open/close state of the air communication hole, a pressurized unit that applies pressure to the ink inside the main tank so as to deliver the ink inside the main tank to the ink supply member, and a relative position controller that controls the relative position changer to switch an operation mode of the ink-jet recording apparatus to at least following three modes: (a) a recording mode in which the ink supply opening and the ink supply nozzle are separated and the air communication hole is in an open state so that recording of an image on the recording medium is enabled; (b) an ink supply mode in which the ink supply opening is connected to the ink supply nozzle and the air communication hole is in an open state so that ink is supplied to the sub-tank by pressure applied by the pressurized unit; and (c) a discharge performance recovery mode in which the ink supply opening and the ink supply nozzle are closely connected and the air communication hole is in a closed state so that discharge performance of the recording head is recovered by the pressure applied by the pressurized unit.