Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Controller
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-29
2001-11-27
Colilla, Daniel J. (Department: 2854)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Controller
C347S019000, C400S703000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06322182
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge for an ink-jet printing device for identifying and ensuring ink stored in an inkjet printing device is the original factory ink or not.
2. Related Art
Ink-jet printers have been widely used for providing high quality printing on any paper. They have such features as energy saving, printing fast without any noise, good portability as being compact, and, in particular, easy to manufacture. Thus, they are popular for personal or office uses.
Nevertheless, the ink-jet cartridge design is the most important one in the ink-jet printer manufacturing. Generally, the ink-jet cartridge contains an ink reservoir, a print head, and an ink supply port or an ink passage between the ink reservoir and the print head. In some designs, there is an additional ink chamber. Aside from those, it also contains the ink for printing.
It is very popular in the market to use the device of the refill ink for re-filling an ink-jet cartridge. However, in the aspect of the customers, it will cause the print head damage by using the refill ink and in the aspect of the manufacturers, it will be the disadvantages of the customers' using the refill ink and lowering the amount of using the print head. Therefore, developing an apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge and an identifiable ink is surely necessary to satisfy the above reasons.
The ink can be classified into the dye type and the pigment type. In terms of its composition, the ink contains: (1) water, which is about 70% to 80% by weight; (2) dye; (3) solvent, etc. Therefore, if one wants to change the property of the ink, the modification can be made on (1) the composition of the ink and (2) the ratio of the components in the ink. The ink design can thus be achieved by changing these two properties.
In conventional design, it can't identify whether an ink stored in the ink-jet cartridge is the original factory ink or not by the material property of the ink. The instant invention provides a further detector in conventional design of the print head and the detector cooperates with an identifiable ink, adding a special additive thereinto or changing the composition thereof, for achieving the goal of identifying whether the ink is the original factory ink or not and it will be customers' and manufacturers' great advantages.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a method of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge. It provides an identifiable ink by adding a special additive such as salt additive or acid additive into the ink or changing the composition of the ink or the ratio of the components in the ink. Furthermore, the ink further cooperates with an apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge to avoid the shortcomings of using the refill ink to damage the print head and of lowering the amounts of using the print head. Moreover, changing the material property of the ink can be achieved easily and it will not affect the print quality of the ink-jet printing.
Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge. The apparatus cooperating with an identifiable ink can achieve the goal of identifying whether the ink is the original factory ink or not, and the design in the print head is almost no need to change, so the design will be quite simple.
An apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge disclosed by this invention, which comprises:
an ink reservoir, which is a container for storing the ink and has at least one orifice for the ink to flow out through the orifice;
a print head, which is connected to the orifice of the ink reservoir to jet the ink in the ink reservoir to process printing operation; and
a detector, which is connected to the IC of the print head for detecting an electrical property such as resistance or capacitance of the ink.
The ink cooperating with the apparatus of identifying ink stored in the ink-jet cartridge is made by adding a special additive such as salt additive or acid additive or changing the composition thereof or changing the ratio of the components therein and is used for providing an identifiable ink and is capable of controlling the printer to work or not. The steps comprise:
a)using a detector to detect the electrical property of the ink;
b)judging whether the electrical property of the ink is in a predetermined range or not?
c)if the electrical property of the ink is in the predetermined range by judging on the step b), the ink is judged to be the original factory ink and then the printer is at the state of standing by; and
d)if the electrical property of the ink is not in the predetermined range by judging on the step b), the ink is judged to be not the original factory ink and then the printer is not working.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5289211 (1994-02-01), Morandotti et al.
patent: 5682184 (1997-10-01), Stephany et al.
patent: 5992961 (1999-11-01), Ishikawa et al.
patent: 5992986 (1999-11-01), Gyotoku et al.
patent: 4009808-A1 (1990-08-01), None
Chiang Dong-Sang
Lin Chen-Hua
Wu Ji-chen
Birch & Stewart Kolasch & Birch, LLP
Colilla Daniel J.
WiserTek International Corp.
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