TONER CONSUMPTION MEASURING APPARATUS AND TONER CONSUMPTION MEASURING METHOD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent the occurrence of error in toner consumption measurement by applying different weights according to an image patterns and/or an operation mode for each page. SOLUTION: A toner consumption measuring apparatus is constituted of an effective signal generating part, a counting part, a coefficient memory and a print controller. Printing data and video clock signal to synchronize the printing data are inputted to the effective signal generating part and a count effective signal is generated. In the counting part, the count effective signal is measured and the number of pixels in the printing data is counted. Toner consumption coefficient per pixel unit is stored into the coefficient memory. The print controller calculates the toner consumption by determining the image pattern compensation coefficient every time one page is printed and setting the weight by the image pattern compensation coefficient. The image pattern compensation coefficient is determined by an average value of ratio of the difference in the number of pixels between adjacent lines to the total number of pixels for one page or two or more image pattern compensation coefficients. COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI