Patent ID: 7771001

Claim:
A liquid discharge apparatus that allows a discharge head to discharge liquid to a predetermined object, the apparatus comprising: a plurality of discharge heads detachable independently; a head switching circuit that switches a target discharge head to another target discharge head among the discharge heads in a set switching order to allow the target discharge head to discharge liquid; a monitoring circuit that monitors liquid discharge conditions of each discharge head, the liquid discharge conditions including the frequency of use of the discharge head and the presence or absence of a failure in the discharge head; a life determining circuit that determines the life of each discharge head on the basis of the result of monitoring by the monitoring circuit; a target head setting circuit that sets each of the discharge heads having a remaining life to the target discharge head and sets the switching order so that the frequencies of use of the target discharge heads are imbalanced; and a notifying circuit that provides a notification for urging replacement of the discharge head whose remaining life is lower than a predetermined value.