US Patent 11273636 Adaptive printhead cleaning

Systems and methods are provided for adaptive printhead cleaning. One embodiment is a printer maintenance system that includes memory to store defect information of a group of nozzles of a printer, and a processor to determine whether the group of nozzles have a number of nozzle defects that exceeds a threshold based on the defect information. In response to a determination that the threshold is exceeded, the processor determines a type of cleaning operation, a cleaning duration, and a cleaning intensity to perform for the group of nozzles based on the defect information. The processor then initiates a cleaning operation for the group of nozzles according to the type of cleaning operation, the cleaning duration, and the cleaning intensity determined for the group of nozzles.