Patent ID: 7661805

Claim:
An ink-jet printer, comprising: a carriage which moves along a recording medium; a recording head which is mounted on the carriage and which performs recording on the recording medium by ejecting ink from nozzle holes; an ink tank provided outside of the carriage; a case body mounted on the carriage, the case body including a buffer tank with a storage chamber to store ink supplied from the ink tank; an air-discharged passage, disposed in the case body, through which air separated from the ink in the storage chamber is discharged; an air-discharging valve device, disposed in the case body, and in fluid communication with the air-discharge passage to open and close the air-discharge passage; a valve opening-and-closing device which is provided outside of the carriage and which operates the air-discharging valve device between a valve-open state and a valve-close state; and an operating member interposed between the air-discharging valve device and the valve opening-and-closing device, wherein the operating member is movable by the valve opening-and-closing device, so that the air-discharging valve device is operated to be place in the valve-open state and the valve-close state via the operating member, when the carriage is moved to a predetermined position; wherein the operating member is provided on the carriage so as to be movable in a direction in which the air-discharging valve device is operated to be placed in the valve-open state and valve-close state, wherein, when the carriage is moved to the predetermined position, the valve opening and-closing device is opposed to the operating member, wherein the ink tank is provided in a plural number to give a plurality of ink tanks, the storage chamber of the buffer tank is provided in the plural number to give a plurality of storage chambers that respectively correspond to a plurality of inks supplied from the plurality of ink tanks, the air-discharge passage is provided in the plural number to give a plurality of air-discharge passages that respectively correspond to the plurality of storage cambers, and the air-discharging valve device is provided in the plural number to give a plurality of air-discharging valve devices that respectively correspond to the plurality of air-discharge passages, and wherein the operating member is arranged to be located so as to be opposed to at least two of the plurality of air-discharging valve devices, so that, when the carriage is moved to the predetermined position, the valve opening-and-closing device moves the operating member such that the at least two of the plurality of air-discharging valve devices are simultaneously operated.