Patent ID: 7731324

Claim:
An inkjet recording apparatus, comprising: a head which ejects ink droplets of light-curable ink to a print medium to form an image on the print medium; a light irradiating device which is located at a downstream side of the head, and irradiates light from a light source onto the ink droplets immediately after the ink droplets have been deposited on the print medium, wherein the light irradiating device includes a scanning device, including: the light source which emits the light, an optical system including a scanning mirror, the optical system concentrating the light emitted by the light source onto the print medium through the scanning mirror, and a mirror turning device which turns the scanning mirror; a control device which controls the light irradiating device in such a manner that luminous energy irradiated onto a region of the print medium where bleeding of the ink droplets would be conspicuous is greater than luminous energy irradiated onto another region of the print medium; and an ink ejection determination device, including: a first branching device which is disposed in an optical path of the optical system, and causes the light to branch off in such a manner that the light passes through a gap between the head and the print medium, thereby irradiating the light onto the ink droplets which have been ejected from the head and have not yet been deposited on the print medium, a second branching device which is disposed in the optical path between the light source and the scanning mirror, and causes reflected light reflected by the ink droplets which have not yet been deposited on the print medium and returned back through the optical system to branch off, an optical sensor which measures the reflected light branched off by the second branching device and outputs a measurement signal, and a judging device which judges whether the ink droplets have been ejected from nozzles of the head or not according to the measurement signal obtained from the optical sensor.