Patent ID: 8646883

Claim:
A method of printing comprising; providing liquid under pressure sufficient to eject liquid jets through a plurality of nozzles of a liquid chamber, the plurality of nozzles being disposed along a nozzle array direction, the plurality of nozzles being arranged into a first group and second group in which the nozzles of the first group and second group are interleaved such that a nozzle of the first group is positioned between adjacent nozzles of the second group and a nozzle of the second group is positioned between adjacent nozzles of the first group; providing a drop formation device associated with each of the plurality of nozzles; providing input image data; providing each of the drop formation devices with a sequence of drop formation waveforms to modulate the liquid jets to selectively cause portions of the liquid jets to break off into streams of one or more print drops having a print drop volume V p and one or more non-print drops having a non-print drop volume V np where the print drop volume and the non-print drop volume are distinct from each other in response to the input image data; providing a timing delay device to shift the timing of the drop formation waveforms supplied to the drop formation devices of nozzles of one of the first group or the second group so that the print drops formed from nozzles of the first group and the print drops formed from nozzles of the second group are not aligned relative to each other along the nozzle array direction; providing a charging device including: a first common charge electrode associated with the liquid jets formed from both the nozzles of the first group and the nozzles of the second group; and a source of constant electrical potential between the first charge electrode and the liquid jets; the first common charge electrode being positioned relative to the vicinity of break off of liquid jets to produce a print drop charge state on drops of volume V p and to produce a non-print drop charge state on drops of volume V np which is substantially different from the print drop charge state; providing a deflection device; causing print drops having the print drop charge state and non-print drop having the non-print drop charge state to travel along different paths using the deflection device; providing a catcher; and intercepting non-print drops using the catcher while allowing print drops to continue to travel along a path toward a recording media.