Patent ID: 7455388

Claim:
A liquid droplet ejection apparatus for ejecting function liquid droplets onto a plurality of pixel areas formed on a substrate based on a color arrangement pattern composed of a plurality of colors, said function liquid droplets being ejected by moving, relative to the substrate, a plurality of color-dependent function liquid droplet ejection heads having a plurality of corresponding function liquids introduced therein, said apparatus comprising: a plurality of carriage units, each carriage unit supporting one set of the plurality of color-dependent function liquid droplet ejection heads; an X-axis table having the substrate thereon and moving the substrate in an X-axis direction as a main scanning direction; a Y-axis table adapted to move each of the plurality of carriage units in a Y-axis direction; and a controller adapted to control each of the function liquid droplet ejection heads, the X-axis table, and the Y-axis table, wherein the plurality of carriage units are aligned in the Y-axis direction, wherein the plurality of color-dependent function liquid droplet ejection heads of each of the carriage units is arranged such that a plurality of color-dependent partial imaging lines, each formed by a plurality of ejection nozzles, are connected one after another in a predetermined order in the Y-axis direction so as to make up a single divided imaging line, and in an imaging process, a plurality of divided imaging lines drawn by the plurality of carriage units aligned in the Y-axis direction are connected to one another in the Y-axis direction to form a single imaging line, and wherein the controller performs the imaging process by repeating a main scanning operation for driving each of the function liquid droplet ejection heads in synchronization with the substrate moving in the X-axis direction and a sub-scanning operation for moving each of the function liquid droplet ejection heads in the Y-axis direction via the carriage unit by about each of the partial imaging lines.