Patent ID: 7614720

Claim:
An inkjet recording device comprising: a printhead having a plurality of inkjet nozzles for firing ink droplets therethrough; a printing controller arranged to operate, upon reception of a print command, to selectively activate the plurality of inkjet nozzles to fire ink droplets, thereby performing a printing operation for printing an image on a recording medium; a nozzle-cleaning controller arranged to activate the plurality of inkjet nozzles to fire ink droplets, thereby performing a nozzle cleaning operation for removing performance-degrading factors from the plurality of inkjet nozzles; a calculator arranged to calculate a scheduled time of a next nozzle-cleaning operation which succeeds a time instant at which a last firing operation was implemented by the printhead, by a predetermined reference-time-interval; a nozzle-cleaning activator arranged to activate the nozzle-cleaning controller if a current time reaches the calculated scheduled-time of nozzle-cleaning operation; and a frequency reducer arranged to perform an operation concerning a reduction in a frequency at which the nozzle-cleaning operation is repeated by the printhead, by monitoring the calculated scheduled-time of a next nozzle-cleaning operation, on a time-line basis.