Patent attributes
A method of flushing a nozzle of an inkjet recording head so as to recover an ink-ejection performance of the nozzle. The nozzle ejects, in a recording mode of the inkjet recording head, a plurality of droplets of an ink to record dot images, such that each of the droplets has an arbitrary one of a plurality of volumes. The flushing method includes causing the inkjet recording head to perform, for a first time, a plurality of continuous flushing actions in each of which the nozzle attempts to eject a droplet of the ink whose volume is larger than a smallest volume of the plurality of volumes, and causing the inkjet recording head to repeat, at least one more time, the plurality of continuous flushing actions while interposing a pause time between each pair of consecutive times out of the first time and said at least one more time.