<title>Nonlinearity and image distortion in electrographic continuous toning print</title>

Abstract

Electrographic printing with a latent image generation by direct dielectric charging offers the advantage of continuous toning. Such continuous toning can be used for both full grey scale and full color printing. For high quality imaging, in both cases, the evenness of charge distribution and image edge sharpness and smoothness become requirements. The latent image formed by a matrix of electron beams is degraded by charge-to-charge interactions. Outcomes of such interactions are the blooming effect, the image deflection, and compression which together cause non-uniformity in the horizontal charge distribution. Variability in the horizontal charge distribution is periodic and produce the vertical banding with DPI/2 frequency. To suppress the banding defect, printing with variable dot order is suggested. The charge distribution uniformity can also suffer from the variability of the charge emission from individual charge generating sites caused by the printhead manufacturing tolerances. Liberation of the print quality from the printhead structural imperfections seems to be feasible using the latent image potential rather than the electron beam timing for the deposited charge density limitation. The principal structural arrangement of such a printing system is discussed.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.