CN114801527A - Ink-jet printing control system and method - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention discloses an ink-jet printing control system and a method, which comprises a sensor, a synchronous signal control board, a host computer, a switch and a plurality of SOC printing control boards, wherein the sensor is used for acquiring the paper feeding speed of a printer, the synchronous signal control board is used for generating a printing spray head synchronous signal based on the paper feeding speed of the printer, the host computer is used for converting a picture to be printed into printing data, the switch is used for receiving the printing data and the synchronous signal, each SOC printing control board is connected with one printing spray head, each SOC printing control board comprises a master control device used for receiving the printing data distributed by the host computer through the switch, the printing control device is connected with the master control device through a bus, the corresponding printing spray head is controlled based on the printing data received by the master control device, the master control device and the printing control device are integrated on one SOC printing control board, and the hardware wiring cost is saved, the time delay of signals is reduced, the anti-interference capability of the whole system is improved, and the pressure of the upper computer for transmitting data is reduced.

Description

An inkjet printing control system and method

technical field

The invention relates to the field of printing, in particular to an inkjet printing control system and method.

Background technique

As shown in Figure 1, the current digital inkjet printer's print file rendering subsystem, data processing and nozzle control subsystem generally adopts a three-level architecture consisting of a host computer, a main control system and a nozzle control module. When printing, the host computer needs to render the file to be printed, generate printable data that matches the specific printer nozzle and resolution, etc., and transmit the rendered print data to the main control system in real time, and the main control system will then print the data to be printed. It is distributed and transmitted to the nozzle control module in real time, and the nozzle control module controls the nozzle array according to the received printing data to complete the printing.

Since the high-speed printing requires the host computer to transmit the rendered data to be printed to the main control and control module in real time, the transmission bandwidth between the host computer and the main control system and between the main control system and the control module is required to be very high. The host computer and the main control system usually use USB3.0 or high-speed Ethernet for data transmission, while the main control system and the nozzle control module mainly use Ethernet or dedicated bus for information exchange. Since a large number of nozzle holes on the printer nozzle need to be controlled in a very short time segment during printing, the real-time requirements can only be met by parallel control. The size of the file will be greatly increased. Therefore, during high-speed printing, if the data to be printed is transmitted in real time by the host computer, the data transmission from the host computer to the main control system and the main control system to the print head control module is required to meet the high bandwidth. , low latency, low jitter and other requirements. The existing 10 Gigabit network switches have gradually been unable to meet the needs of widening the printing width in industrial production. The blind pursuit of increasing the bandwidth capability of the transmission system not only increases the hardware cost, but also increases the difficulty of system development, hindering the rapid development of industrial printers. At present, the mainstream digital printing main control system mostly adopts pure FPGA, which determines that it can only use pure hardware logic to process data transmission, processing and nozzle control. Therefore, the communication between the FPGA main control system and the host computer usually adopts the method of field bus, and the transmission distance and speed are greatly limited.

In summary, it can be seen that the existing printing technology has been unable to meet the requirements of real-time data transmission, low jitter, and high concurrency control under the constraints of current chip technology, cost, and development cycle.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The purpose of the present invention is to provide an inkjet printing control method and system to solve the problems in the prior art that it is difficult to satisfy real-time data transmission and high concurrency control.

In order to solve the above-mentioned technical problems, the present invention provides an inkjet printing control system, comprising:

The sensor is used to collect the paper feeding speed of the printer;

A synchronization signal control board, connected with the sensor, generates a print head synchronization signal based on the paper feeding speed of the printer;

The host computer is used to convert the pictures to be printed into print data;

a switch, connected with the host computer and the synchronization signal control board, for receiving the print data and the synchronization signal;

A plurality of SOC printing control boards, each SOC printing control board is connected to a printing nozzle, and each SOC printing control board includes:

a main control device, configured to receive the print data distributed by the upper computer through the switch;

The printing control device is connected to the main control device through a bus, and controls the corresponding printing nozzles based on the printing data received by the main control device.

Preferably, the SOC printing control board further includes:

The memory is connected to the main control device and used to store the print data received by the main control device.

Preferably, the switch adopts the RJ45 standard network interface.

Preferably, the host computer, the switch and the SOC printing control board use an lwip protocol stack for data communication.

Preferably, the sensor adopts Omron E6B2-C model.

The present invention also provides a printing method based on the inkjet printing control system described in any one of the preceding claims, comprising:

Collect the paper speed of the printer;

generating a print head synchronization signal based on the printer's paper feed speed;

Convert the picture to be printed into print data, and distribute the print data and the print head synchronization signal to a plurality of SOC print control boards;

Each SOC print control board controls the print head corresponding to each SOC print control board to complete the printing task based on the received print data and the print head synchronization signal.

Preferably, converting the picture to be printed into print data, and distributing the print data and the print head synchronization signal to multiple SOC print control boards includes:

The picture to be printed is converted into print data by the host computer, the host computer calls the lwip protocol stack, builds a network path, and distributes the print data to multiple SOC print control boards through the switch.

Preferably, the SOC printing control board stores the printing data in the memory, and controls the printing nozzles corresponding to each SOC printing control board to complete the printing task according to the time sequence corresponding to the printing data.

Preferably, controlling the printing nozzles corresponding to each SOC printing control board to complete the printing task according to the timing sequence corresponding to the printing data includes:

The serial printing data in the memory is rearranged and combined, and converted into the parallel printing data required by the printing nozzle.

Preferably, the controlling the printing nozzle to complete the printing task based on the printing data and the synchronization signal of the printing nozzle includes:

generating a print clock based on the print head synchronization signal;

The parallel printing data is output to the interface of the printing nozzle corresponding to each SOC printing control board according to the printing clock to complete the printing task.

The inkjet printing control system and method provided by the present invention integrates the main control device and the printing control device into a SOC printing control board, saves the cost of hardware wiring, reduces the delay of the signal, and improves the overall system The anti-interference ability of the SOC reduces the pressure on the host computer to transmit data, and realizes low latency, low jitter, and high bandwidth in the chip. The data communication bandwidth inside the SOC printing control board can be flexibly set, which is convenient for the development of logic control. The versatility and stability of the system allow users to easily and quickly build an industrial printing system, which reduces the threshold for use and maintenance costs of industrial printers, facilitates the wide expansion of printing for industrial printers, and improves the flexibility of the printing control system.

Description of drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions of the prior art, the following will briefly introduce the accompanying drawings used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art. Obviously, the drawings in the following description are only For some embodiments of the present invention, for those of ordinary skill in the art, other drawings can also be obtained according to these drawings without creative efforts.

1 is a structural diagram of an existing inkjet printing system;

2 is a block diagram of an inkjet printing control system provided by the present invention;

3 is a functional structural diagram of an inkjet printing control system provided by the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a first specific embodiment of an inkjet printing control method provided by the present invention.

Detailed ways

The core of the present invention is to provide an inkjet printing control method and system. By integrating the main control device and the printing control device into a SOC printing control board, the hardware wiring cost is saved, the signal delay is reduced, and the The anti-interference ability of the whole system reduces the pressure on the host computer to transmit data, and realizes low delay, low jitter and high bandwidth in the chip.

In order to make those skilled in the art better understand the solution of the present invention, the present invention will be further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and specific embodiments. Obviously, the described embodiments are only some, but not all, embodiments of the present invention. Based on the embodiments of the present invention, all other embodiments obtained by those of ordinary skill in the art without creative efforts shall fall within the protection scope of the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 2 , this embodiment provides an inkjet printing control system, which is as follows:

The sensor is used to collect the paper feeding speed of the printer, and the sensor adopts the Omron E6B2-C model.

A synchronization signal control board, connected with the sensor, generates a print head synchronization signal based on the paper feeding speed of the printer;

The host computer is used to convert the pictures to be printed into print data;

The host computer is mainly divided into two parts: the operation and control of the software interface, and the management and transmission of data. The host computer is the layer that is most in contact with the user. This layer mainly includes functions related to data preparation and user visualization operations;

The switch is connected with the upper computer and the synchronization signal control board, and is used for receiving the printing data and the synchronization signal, and the switch adopts the RJ45 standard network interface.

The host computer, the switch and the SOC printing control board provided in this embodiment use the lwip protocol stack for data communication, and the lwip protocol stack is used to reduce the occupation of memory on the basis of maintaining the main functions of the tcp/ip protocol, so that the its working fine.

In other embodiments, the tcp/ip protocol can also be used for data communication;

a plurality of SOC printing control boards, connected to the switch, outputting printing data based on the synchronization signal, and controlling the printing nozzles to complete printing, and each SOC printing control board is connected to a printing nozzle;

Synchronous control and parallelism of data and printheads are the keys for high-speed printers to stand out. The realization of synchronization and parallelism can greatly speed up the printing speed. By designing synchronous control logic for the SOC printing control office, the same computing and main control modules can be realized. The control of all printing nozzles in the SOC is completed by making full use of the powerful parallel processing capability and rich I/O of the SOC printing control board, and designing a high-speed parallel control structure. For the synchronous control of the sprinkler heads across the computing and main control modules, a system composed of industrial Ethernet is required to complete the combination of software and hardware.

The calculation and main control module is realized based on the SOC printing control board, which can more conveniently support the use of industrial Ethernet for the upper computer, the calculation and the main control module, and the communication between the calculation and the main control module, forming an array of calculation and main control modules. . The flexible expansion and contraction of the system scale can be easily achieved through the increase or decrease of the calculation and main control modules. Adding computing and main control modules to a single device can provide wider-format printing, while controlling computing and main control modules in different devices can control multiple printer devices at the same time to complete large-scale printing tasks. Fast processing. At the same time, using industrial Ethernet, the transmission distance is not limited, and the upper computer and lower printing equipment can be deployed more flexibly.

The SOC printing control board includes:

a main control device, configured to receive the print data and store the print data in a memory;

A print control device is connected to the main control device through a high-speed bus, and controls the print head based on the print data.

This embodiment will be developed using the co-design method of the host computer and the SOC printing control board. The SOC printing control board can receive and store the rasterized data through the network, and output the results according to the corresponding timing requirements, forming a dynamic, stable working mode. At the same time of distribution, it is necessary to control the module where different data reach which nozzle is located, so as to prepare for the subsequent synchronization control and data parallel processing.

In this embodiment, the problem of voltage attenuation of the printing nozzles is controlled by means of distributed multi-module independent voltage configuration.

The inkjet printing control system provided by this embodiment uses the heterogeneous computing method of the SOC printing control board, which can not only reduce the requirements for network transmission by means of software and hardware co-design, but also can combine task parallelism and data parallelism. The throughput of the entire printing system is higher, so as to achieve the purpose of synchronously and efficiently controlling the nozzles. Part of the rip function originally processed by the host computer is transferred to the SOC printing control board to realize, which greatly reduces the size of the print data file transmitted by the host computer. The problem of high bandwidth and low latency is solved by optimizing the data transmission process from the system architecture. All devices are connected with switches to form a set of internal industrial network, which further increases the versatility and stability of the system, enables users to deploy an industrial printing system conveniently and quickly, and reduces the use threshold and maintenance cost of industrial printers. It is convenient to expand the printing width of the industrial printer, and the flexibility of the printing control system is improved. The printing synchronization signal is also transmitted to the SOC printing control board through the switch, which solves the problems that the synchronization signal hardware circuit is difficult to design and the hardware is difficult to expand. The SOC printing control board is adopted to integrate several discrete modules of the host computer, main control module and nozzle control module currently used in digital inkjet printers into a SOC printing control board, and the external dedicated bus is optimized into the chip, which enhances the entire system. The high anti-interference ability and transmission bandwidth reduce the cost of developing the hardware circuit of the control system and improve the flexibility of development. Through the field-specific standardized design of hardware, it is conducive to the function definition of subdivided applications through software, so that the core module of digital inkjet printing can move from hardware development to software programming, which can promote the development of the industry faster, and provide a better solution for domestic printer nozzles. Supporting and jointly promoting the independent and controllable development of my country's digital printing industry.

Please refer to FIG. 4, which is a flowchart of a first specific embodiment of an inkjet printing control method provided by the present invention; the specific operation steps are as follows:

Step S401: Use a sensor to collect the paper feeding speed of the printer.

Step S402: generating a print head synchronization signal based on the printer paper feeding speed;

The sensor that collects the speed of the paper feeding medium of the printer is connected to a synchronous signal control board (controlled by an arm single-chip microcomputer), and the synchronous signal control board generates the synchronous signal of the nozzle according to the output processing of the sensor.

Step S403: Convert the picture to be printed into print data, and distribute the print data and the print head synchronization signal to multiple SOC print control boards;

Convert the image to be printed into print data;

Invoke the light IP protocol, build a network path, and distribute the print data to multiple SOC print control boards through the switch,

Step S404: controlling the printing nozzle to complete the printing task based on the printing data and the synchronization signal of the printing nozzle;

Rearrange and combine the serial printing data in the memory, convert it into the parallel printing data required by the nozzle, and control the printing nozzle to complete the printing task according to the timing sequence corresponding to the printing data;

The number of the SOC printing control board and the corresponding printing nozzles can be increased or decreased based on the printing task.

The need for synchronous control processing is mainly due to the need to use more printhead modules to spliced into wider printheads as the printing format increases. Or if the number of devices that are put into printing at the same time increases, more nozzle modules will be put into work at the same time. The above two situations will lead to the expansion of the array of computing and main control modules, and after the scale increases, it is still necessary to ensure the synchronization of all nozzles. The difficulty of achieving synchronization increases with the increase in the number of printing nozzles and the increase in printing speed. The control of all print heads in the same computing and main control module is realized by designing synchronous control logic for the FPGA in the SOC chip, making full use of the powerful parallel processing capability and rich I/O of the FPGA to design high-speed parallel control structure to complete. For the synchronous control of the sprinkler heads across the computing and main control modules, a system composed of industrial Ethernet is required to complete the combination of software and hardware. Parallel processing of data is the key to whether high-speed printers can achieve high-speed. Data parallelism mainly uses the FPGA·SOC heterogeneous computing method, which can not only reduce the requirements for network transmission through the co-design of software and hardware, but also make the throughput of the entire printing system higher through the integration of task parallelism and data parallelism. In order to achieve the purpose of synchronous and efficient control of the nozzle.

This embodiment provides an inkjet printing controller method, which integrates the main control device and the printing control device on a SOC printing control board, and the upper computer directly communicates with the SOC printing control board through a switch to collect printing synchronization of the displacement of the printing medium. The signal is also transmitted to the SOC print control board through the switch. Because the standard network interface of RJ45 is used, the redundant dedicated bus is removed, the hardware circuit is simplified, the expandability and versatility of the printer control system are increased, the difficulty of hardware development is reduced, and the universality of data processing and print head control system is improved. sex.

The various embodiments in this specification are described in a progressive manner, and each embodiment focuses on the differences from other embodiments, and the same or similar parts between the various embodiments may be referred to each other. As for the device disclosed in the embodiment, since it corresponds to the method disclosed in the embodiment, the description is relatively simple, and the relevant part can be referred to the description of the method.

Professionals may further realize that the units and algorithm steps of each example described in conjunction with the embodiments disclosed herein can be implemented in electronic hardware, computer software, or a combination of the two, in order to clearly illustrate the possibilities of hardware and software. Interchangeability, the above description has generally described the components and steps of each example in terms of functionality. Whether these functions are performed in hardware or software depends on the specific application and design constraints of the technical solution. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality using different methods for each particular application, but such implementations should not be considered beyond the scope of the present invention.

The inkjet printing control method and system provided by the present invention are described in detail above. The principles and implementations of the present invention are described herein by using specific examples, and the descriptions of the above embodiments are only used to help understand the method and the core idea of the present invention. It should be pointed out that for those skilled in the art, without departing from the principle of the present invention, several improvements and modifications can also be made to the present invention, and these improvements and modifications also fall within the protection scope of the claims of the present invention.

Claims (10)

1. An inkjet printing system, comprising:

the sensor is used for acquiring the paper feeding speed of the printer;

the synchronous signal control board is connected with the sensor and generates a printing nozzle synchronous signal based on the paper feeding speed of the printer;

the upper computer is used for converting the pictures to be printed into printing data;

the switch is connected with the upper computer and the synchronous signal control board and used for receiving the printing data and the synchronous signals;

a plurality of SOC print control boards, every SOC print control board connects a print nozzle, every SOC print control board includes:

the main control device is used for receiving the printing data distributed by the upper computer through the switch;

and the printing control device is connected with the main control device through a bus and controls the corresponding printing spray head based on the printing data received by the main control device.

2. The inkjet printing control system of claim 1, wherein the SOC print control board further comprises:

and the memory is connected with the main control device and used for storing the printing data received by the main control device.

3. The inkjet print control system of claim 1, wherein said switch employs an RJ45 standard network interface.

4. The inkjet printing control system of claim 1, wherein the host computer, the switch and the SOC printing control board are in data communication using a lwip protocol stack.

5. The inkjet printing control system of claim 1 wherein said sensor is of the ohilon model E6B 2-C.

6. A printing method based on the inkjet printing control system according to any one of claims 1 to 5, comprising:

collecting the paper feeding speed of a printer;

generating a printing nozzle synchronizing signal based on the paper feeding speed of the printer;

converting pictures to be printed into printing data, and distributing the printing data and the printing nozzle synchronous signals to a plurality of SOC printing control boards;

and each SOC printing control board controls the printing nozzle corresponding to each SOC printing control board to complete the printing task based on the received printing data and the printing nozzle synchronizing signal.

7. The inkjet printing control method according to claim 6, wherein the converting the picture to be printed into print data and distributing the print data and the print head synchronization signal to a plurality of SOC print control boards comprises:

the method comprises the steps that pictures to be printed are converted into printing data through an upper computer, the upper computer calls an lwip protocol stack, a network access is built, and the printing data are distributed to a plurality of SOC printing control boards through a switch.

8. The inkjet printing control method according to claim 7, wherein the SOC printing control board stores the printing data in a memory, and controls the printing nozzle corresponding to each SOC printing control board to complete a printing task according to a timing sequence corresponding to the printing data.

9. The inkjet printing control method according to claim 8, wherein the controlling the printing nozzle corresponding to each SOC printing control board to complete the printing task according to the corresponding timing of the printing data comprises:

and rearranging and combining the serial printing data in the memory, and converting the serial printing data into parallel printing data required by the printing nozzle.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein controlling the print head to perform a print job based on the print data and the print head synchronization signal comprises:

generating a printing clock based on the printing nozzle synchronous signal;

and outputting the parallel printing data to the interface of the printing nozzle corresponding to each SOC printing control board according to the printing clock to complete the printing task.

Images