To sufficiently and uniformly recover all of ejection nozzle arrays by preventing a period of suction time necessary for recovery of an ink-ejection performance from increasing even when quantities of ejected ink of the plurality of ejection nozzles are different from each other and to reduce a quantity of consumed ink in a recovery operation.
Magnitude of negative pressure created on regions corresponding to the respective plurality of ejection nozzle arrays 1, 2 is adjusted by differentiating sizes or the number of ink discharge holes 51, 52 of caps, inner diameters or lengths of tubes 61, 62 connected to a suction pump 70, and density of ink absorption materials provided to the respective regions of the caps so that the periods of suction time necessary for recovery of the ink-ejection performance of the ejection nozzle arrays are made uniform.
Masuaki Tanaka
Makoto Yamamoto