Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Ejector mechanism
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-17
2002-06-25
Barlow, John (Department: 2853)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Ejector mechanism
C347S066000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06409309
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a recording apparatus. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a printer head, or a printer having a recording head positioned opposite to a printing medium such as a printing paper, also to and a recording solution jetting unit for jetting a recording solution such as a vaporizable dye to this printing medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Very recently, various needs such as monochromatic recording needs and also color hard copying needs are increased in video cameras, televisions, and image recording fields, for instance, computer graphics. To satisfy these needs, various color hard copy systems have been proposed, for example, the sublimation type thermoelectric system, the melting thermoelectric system, the ink jet system, the electronic photographic system, and the thermal developing silver halide system.
The above-described various color hard copy systems are mainly classified into the dye diffusion thermoelectric system (sublimation type thermoelectric system) and the ink jet system, which may function as a color hard copy type apparatus, capable of easily producing images with high image qualities.
In this dye diffusion thermoelectric system among these recording systems, and ink sheet and a printing medium (printing paper) are made in close contact with each other under certain pressure, a thermal recording head positioned above the ink sheet may apply heat to this ink sheet in response to image information, and a transferring dye is thermally transferred from the ink sheet to a dye accepting layer in response to this heat application. The ink sheet is coated with an ink layer made by distributing a transferring dye (will also be referred to a “recording material” hereinafter) with high density in a properly-selected binder resin. A dye-coated resin for accepting the transferred dye is coated on the printing medium.
A so-called “thermoelectric system” is featured by having instantaneous printing operation, and capable of producing full images with high image qualities substantially equal to those of silver halide color pictures. In this thermoelectric system, for instance, the above-described operation is repeatedly performed as to color image signals for yellow, magenta, and cyan, corresponding to the three primary colors used in the subtraction color mixture.
FIG. 1
schematically shows a front view of a major portion of a printer with employment of such a thermoelectric system. In this printer, a thermosensible recording head (simply will be referred to as a “thermal head” hereinafter)
70
is positioned opposite to a platen roller
71
. Between these thermal head
70
and platen roller
71
, both an ink sheet
72
made of an ink layer
72
a
formed on a base film
72
b
, and a recording paper (printing medium)
20
made of a dye-coated resin layer (dye accepting layer)
20
a
formed on a paper
20
b
are traveled with being depressed against the thermal head
70
by the platen roller
71
under such a condition that the ink sheet
72
is sandwiched with the recording paper
20
.
Then, the ink (transferring dye) contained in the ink layer
72
a
selectively heated by the thermal head
70
is transferred in a dot shape to the dye-coated resign layer
20
a
of the printing medium
20
, so that the thermoelectric recording operation is carried out. In general, as to such a thermoelectric recording system, the line system and the serial system are employed. In the line system, a longitudinal-shaped thermal head is positioned perpendicular to a travel direction of a recording paper and is fixedly arranged. In the serial system, a thermal head is reciprocated along a direction perpendicular to a travel direction of a recording paper.
FIG. 2
schematically indicates a plan view of an adjoining portion of a transfer unit of the thermal head
70
.
A ceramics substrate
73
is fixed to a portion above a heat radiation plate (not shown) made of a high heat conductivity material (for instance, aluminium).
A glaze layer
74
is formed at one edge portion above the ceramics substrate
73
while a tip portion thereof is left. A large number of heat emitting layers (made of polysilicon layer (P—Si), or a metal having a high resistance)
75
are arranged in such a manner that these heat emitting layers
75
ride the glaze layer
74
. Separate electrodes
76
and a common electrode
77
are arranged on the ceramics substrate
73
by being connected to the heat emitting layer
75
in such a manner that these separate electrodes
76
and the common electrode
77
are positioned opposite to each other on each of the heat emitting layer
75
at a summit of the glaze layer
74
while maintaining a small space.
The separate electrodes
76
are elongated near the edge portion of the ceramics substrate
73
, and the common electrode
77
is elongated up to the edge portion on the side of the glaze layer
74
. The ceramics substrate
73
is covered with an anti-wearing protection layer with involving the heat emitting layer
75
on the separate electrodes
76
and the glaze layer
74
, and on the common electrode
77
while the tip portion of the separate electrode
76
is left. It should be noted that this protection layer is omitted from FIG.
2
.
However, this system owns such serious drawbacks. That is, a large amount of wastes are produced which are caused by disposing the ink sheets, and the running cost is increased. The serious drawbacks impede the utilization of this system. This drawback is also applied to the melting thermoelectric system.
Additionally, in a full color recording operation, there are some possibilities that the specific color ink which has been once adhered to the recording paper is conversely transferred to other color ink sheets, resulting in color mixtures. As a result, there is such a risk that dirty images are recorded.
Although the thermal developing silver halide system may provide the high image quality, the running cost is increased and also the manufacturing cost of the recording apparatus is increased because the exclusively-used printing paper and the disposable ribbons or the disposable sheets are used.
On the other hand, the ink jet system is described in, for example, Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 61-59911 published in 1986 and Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 5-217 published in 1993. In response to the image information, the recording ink droplets are jetted from the nozzles formed in the recording head so as to be adhered to the recording member for the image recording operation by way of the electrostatic attracting system, the continuous vibration generating system (piezoelectric system), and the thermal system (bubble jet system).
As a result, the image transfer operation can be done by using normal paper, and substantially no waste is disposed in such a case that the ink ribbon is used. Thus, the low running cost can be realized. Currently, in particular, since the color images can be simply outputted by the thermal system, this thermal system (bubble jet system) is popularized.
However, in this ink jet system, it is basically difficult to achieve the density gradation within pixels. Thus, it is practically difficult to reproduce such a high-quality image within short time, which may be obtained by way of the dye diffusion thermoelectric system. This image quality may be comparable to that of a silver halide picture.
In other words, in the conventional ink jet recording system, since one ink droplet forms one pixel, the gradation within one pixel can be hardly realized in view of a basic idea, so that the high-quality image cannot be formed. On the other hand, quasi-gradation representation by way of the dither method may be tried to be executed while utilizing high resolution achieved by the ink jetting system. However, this dither method could not produce images having image qualities equivalent to that made by the sublimation type thermoelectric system, but also the transfer speed by this dither method is
Kohno Minoru
Mitsuhashi Hiroyuki
Tanikawa Toru
Barlow John
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
Sony Corporation
Stephens Juanita
LandOfFree
Recording apparatus having high resolution recording function does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Recording apparatus having high resolution recording function, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Recording apparatus having high resolution recording function will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2905066