Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Fluid or fluid source handling means
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-12
2002-06-25
Nguyen, Judy (Department: 2861)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Fluid or fluid source handling means
C347S029000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06409325
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet print head, an ink-jet cartridge and an ink-jet printing apparatus equipped therewith which can produce high quality printed images on a print medium, and more specifically to an ink-jet cartridge and a method of storing a print head which are suitably applied to ink-jet printing that ejects onto a print medium print ink and a print performance improving liquid that makes insoluble or aggregates coloring materials in the print ink.
2. Description of the Related Art
Apparatuses that print (or record) on a print medium (or recording paper), including paper, cloth and plastic sheets such as OHP films, have been proposed to have a construction that can mount a recording head of various systems such as wire dot recording, thermosensitive recording, thermal transfer recording and ink-jet recording.
Of these recording systems, the ink-jet system is one of low-noise non-impact recording systems that eject ink which then directly adheres to the recording paper. The ink-jet system is largely classed, according to the ink droplet forming method and ink ejection energy generation method, into a continuous type (including charged particle control and spray systems) and an on-demand type (including piezo, spark and bubble jet systems).
The continuous type ejects ink continuously and imparts electric charge only to necessary droplets. The charged droplets then adhere to the recording paper and the remaining non-charged droplets are wasted. The on-demand type, on the other hand, delivers ink only when necessary for printing and therefore neither waste ink nor have a risk of contaminating the interior of the printer. The on-demand type, because it starts or stops ink ejection, has lower response frequencies than those of the continuous type. Hence, the on-demand type realizes high-speed printing by increasing the number of nozzles, and most of the recording apparatuses currently on the market are of the on-demand type. Because the recording apparatuses having the recording head of such an ink-jet system are capable of high-density and high-speed recording, they are commercialized and utilized as output means of information processing systems, which include printers as output terminals of copying machines, facsimiles, electronic typewriters, word processors and workstations or handy or portable printers used on personal computers, host computers, optical disk devices and video apparatuses. In this case, the ink-jet recording apparatus will take a configuration that meets particular functions and the conditions of use of these apparatuses.
Generally, the ink-jet recording apparatuses include a carriage mounting a recording means (recording head) and an ink tank, a feeding means to feed recording paper, and a control means to control these components. The recording head that ejects ink droplets from a plurality of nozzles is serially scanned, i.e., moved in a direction (main scan direction) perpendicular to the recording paper feeding direction (sub-scan direction) and at the same time the recording paper is intermittently fed by an amount equal to the recording width of the recording head during the non-recording time. This recording system performs recording by shooting ink droplets onto the recording paper according to recording signals and has found wide use because of its low running cost and low-noise operation. The use of the recording head that has many ink ejection nozzles aligned in the sub-scan direction can perform recording over a width corresponding to the number of nozzles by scanning, the recording head over the recording paper once. This makes it possible to increase the speed of the recording action.
In the case of a color ink-jet recording apparatus, a color image is formed by superimposing ink droplets ejected from multiple color recording heads. To perform color recording in general requires four kinds of recording head and ink cartridge that correspond to three primary colors-yellow (Y), magenta (M) and cyan (C) -or four colors including black (B) in addition to the three primary colors. In recent years, recording apparatuses that mount such three- or four-color recording heads to form full-color images have been commercialized.
The energy generating means in the recording head to produce energy for ejecting ink include one that uses electromechanical transducers such as piezoelectric elements and one that uses electrothermal transducers having heat generating resisters to heat liquid.
The recording head of a system (so-called bubble jet system) that ejects liquid by using thermal energy (which utilizes the film boiling phenomenon) can arrange the liquid nozzles in high density and thus perform high resolution recording.
The process of ejecting ink as performed by the bubble jet type recording head with the above construction will be explained briefly.
When a heat generating resister (heater) reaches a predetermined temperature, a film bubble that covers the heater surface is :formed. This bubble has a very high internal pressure and expels the ink in the nozzle. An inertia force produced by the expelling action forces the ink out of the nozzle and toward a common liquid chamber in the opposite direction. As the ink movement advances, the internal pressure of the bubble becomes negative and, combined with the flow path resistance, slows down a moving speed of the ink. The speed of the ink ejected out of an orifice of the nozzle is faster than that within the nozzle, so that the ink is narrowed by the balance of the inertia force, the flow path resistance, contraction of the bubble and ink surface tension, and a lump of ink outside the orifice is separated into a droplet. Simultaneously with the contraction of the bubble, ink is supplied from the common liquid chamber into the nozzle by a capillary action and stands by for the next pulse.
In this way the recording head that uses the electrothermal transducer as an energy generating means can produce a bubble in the ink in the liquid path in response to and in a one-to-one relation with a drive electric pulse signal and can also produce and contract a bubble instantaneously and properly, realizing ejection of ink droplets with excellent responsiveness. Further, the recording head can be made compact easily by taking full advantage of the IC technology and microfabrication technology in the semiconductor field where the technological advance and reliability improvement in recent years are remarkable. This in turn facilitates high density integration and lowers the manufacturing cost.
There are two types of such recording heads, a permanent type and a detachable type. In the permanent type the recording head has a service life longer than that of the recording apparatus and is so constructed that it is normally not removed from the apparatus itself. The detachable type, on the other hand, has a detachable head cartridge (also called an ink cartridge) in which a recording head and an ink tank are assembled together. When ink in the head cartridge runs out, the head cartridge is taken out of the apparatus body for recycling and a new head cartridge is installed.
The ink orifices of the head cartridge are sealed with a seal tape for protection during transport, storage and marketing of the head cartridge and also for preventing leakage or evaporation of ink from the ink orifices and inflow of air.
If the adhesion force of the seal tape is increased for more reliable prevention of ink leakage or evaporation and air inflow, adhesive agent of the seal tape remains on the periphery of the orifices. To avoid this problem, a method is known in which a cap member is installed on a seal tape having weak adhesion to press the seal tape by an elastic body of the cap member against the periphery of the orifices. There are growing demands for the ink-jet recording apparatus as excellent recording means and also for higher quality printed images.
In forming images on a recording medium called plain paper the conventional ink-jet recording apparatu
Eida Masataka
Matsumoto Toshiya
Fitzpatrick ,Cella, Harper & Scinto
Nguyen Judy
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