Patent 7404619 was granted and assigned to RICOH COMPANY,LTD. on July, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An image forming apparatus for forming an image on a recording medium by ejecting drops of recording fluid from a recording head includes a waste tank having a space for containing waste fluid, a part for obtaining a correlation value that has a correlation to a deposited state of the waste fluid in the space within the waste tank, and a part for judging whether or not the correlation value exceeds a reference value.