Patent ID: 7686445

Claim:
A method for monitoring a transfer surface maintenance system in a printing system, the method comprising: providing a textured intermediate transfer surface for transferring an image to a substrate; printing a test pattern on the transfer surface; imaging the printed test pattern with a transfer surface image detector to determine a printed pattern response; cleaning the transfer surface by utilizing the transfer surface maintenance system to obtain a cleaned transfer surface; imaging the cleaned transfer surface with the transfer surface image detector to determine a cleaned image response; computing a cleaning failure rate by comparing the printed pattern response to the cleaned image response; determining if a failure condition exists by comparing the computed cleaning failure rate to a predetermined limit; performing a corrective process if the failure condition does exist as a result of the determining, the corrective process including: changing parameters of the transfer surface maintenance system according to the computed cleaning failure rate; comparing the changed parameters to predetermined thresholds; repeating the cleaning, computing, and determining if the predetermined thresholds are not exceeded based on the comparing; and indicating a failure status if the predetermined thresholds are exceeded based on the comparing; and continuing normal printing if the failure condition does not exist as a result of the determining.