US Patent 7641326 Ink jet recording apparatus

An ink jet recording apparatus configured as a multi-function device is provided. The multi-function device can have four ink tanks, which store black ink, cyan ink, yellow ink and magenta ink. The multi-function device may have greater than four sub-tanks, which can be held in a scanning carriage and configured to move with a recording head. By moving the scanning carriage, the positions of the ink tanks can be aligned with the positions of the sub-tanks. In this manner, the basic inks can be supplied from the ink tanks into basic ink sub-tanks, and predetermined combinations of basic inks can be supplied into the other sub-tanks to create mixed inks.