Patent ID: 8491089

Claim:
A liquid-droplet jetting apparatus which jets a liquid droplet of a liquid, comprising: a liquid-droplet jetting head which has a nozzle for jetting the liquid droplet of the liquid; a maintenance mechanism which includes: a suction cap which comes into contact with and separates from the liquid-droplet jetting head and which faces the nozzle; a suction pump which sucks a fluid in a space defined by the suction cap and the liquid-droplet jetting head in a state that the suction cap comes into contact with the liquid-droplet jetting head; and a discharge tube which is connected to the suction pump and discharges the fluid flowing through the suction pump; and a maintenance controller which controls the maintenance mechanism; wherein the maintenance controller controls the suction cap to seal the space and controls the suction pump to perform a suction purge in which the liquid is sucked from the nozzle; wherein the maintenance controller controls the suction pump to perform a discharging operation in which the fluid in the discharge tube is discharged before the suction purge; wherein the maintenance controller controls the suction pump so that power of the suction pump in the discharging operation is smaller than power of the suction pump in the suction purge; and wherein the maintenance controller controls the maintenance mechanism to increase an operation time for the discharging operation, as a quiescent period during which no liquid droplet is jetted from the liquid-droplet jetting head increases.