Patent 7497545 was granted and assigned to Olympus Group on March, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
There is disclosed a compact and inexpensive image forming apparatus which includes a head for discharging inks, an ink supply path fixed in parallel to the head to supply the inks to the head, a recording medium conveying section arranged to face the head, thereby conveying a recording medium, and a maintenance mechanism arranged above the recording medium conveying section and below the ink supply path to perform maintenance of the head during image nonformation.