Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Fluid or fluid source handling means
Reexamination Certificate
2000-06-22
2002-09-17
Nghiem, Michael (Department: 2861)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Fluid or fluid source handling means
C347S108000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06450631
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a shipping package and a storing method of a trade form of selling through transportation and storing or the like in the closed and sealed state of an ink jet head cartridge and an ink tank which are exchangeable and capable of being attached to and removed from an ink jet recording device, and more particularly, it relates to a storing method and a storing container of an ink tank in which a negative pressure generating member containing chamber and an ink containing chamber are adjacent to each other and the ink containing chamber can be separate from the negative pressure generating member containing chamber, and an ink jet head cartridge to which the above described ink tank is mounted.
2. Related Background Art
The ink jet recording device is a device which ejects liquid ink from an ejection port of a recording head to perform recording of characters, images, or the like onto a recording medium such as paper, and the recording heads used in the recording device are roughly divided into two types: a permanent type; and a disposal type.
In the permanent type recording head, a recording head is assembled in the device in advance when delivering the recording device, and a service man performs exchange of heads only in trouble. In the case of such a permanent type recording head, at the time of transportation and storing, in many cases, a cap is applied to the ejection port of the recording head in a state of filling the recording head with recording ink or conservation liquid to perform the transportation and storing.
Moreover, the disposal type recording heads can further roughly divided into an integral type ink jet head cartridge which is integrated at all times with an ink tank for keeping ink to be supplied to the recording head, and a tank separable type ink jet head cartridge in which a tank holder is provided to the recording head as a mounting part of the tank and both can be separated from each other as needed. In any case, an operator can perform the exchange of heads by changing the cartridge to a new one as needed.
As for the transportation and storing of the integral type ink jet head cartridge, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 3-176156 (Patent Registration No. 2683120) by the present applicant or the like is well known. The above described publication discloses a configuration in which a tank is filled with ink and an ejection port of a recording head and an atmosphere communicating port provided in the ink tank are both sealed.
On the other hand, as for the transportation and storing of the separable type ink jet head cartridge, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-183028 by the present applicant is well known, which proposes that a head to be exchanged and an exchangeable tank should be separated since the evaporative composition of ink is adhered to the contact part of the recording head of the electrical connecting part with the recording device to cause a functional drop of the recording head when the exchangeable tank is mounted to the head to be exchanged to be integrally packaged. In the above described publication, it is also disclosed to use an insulating member for preventing the evaporation from the gap between a handling member of the head and the head, and to seal the ejection port by a sealing member and a cap member while filling the interior of the head with ink or conservation liquid. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-17056 discloses a transportation and storing method in which a head filled with ink is contained in a closed package filled with inert gas.
On the other hand, as an ink tank single unit for keeping ink to be supplied to the above described recording head, an ink tank has been proposed and put in practical use, in which a negative pressure generating chamber for generating negative pressure to the recording head and an ink containing chamber for directly containing ink are integrated through a communicating part for the purpose of improving the storing efficiency and efficiency of use of the ink in the ink tank.
As an example of this, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-125232 (Patent Registration No. 2684508) which discloses an invention of making the negative pressure generating member near the atmosphere communicating port to be closed an area in which no ink is kept, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-40043 (Patent Registration No. 2683187) which discloses an invention of a partition wall with a structure of hastening gas-liquid exchange can be shown. The above described publications also disclose a trade form of an ink tank single unit in which the atmosphere communicating port for making the interior of the negative pressure generating chamber in the communicating state to the atmosphere and the ink supply port for supplying ink to the outside such as the recording head are both sealed, and they are excellent inventions.
Herein, recently, the ink jet recording device is required to perform more highly detailed recording onto various recording media.
Part of the present applicant and others have made an application on a type of an ink supply system more excellent in practice in which the above described negative pressure generating member containing chamber and the ink containing chamber corresponding to this are adjacent to each other and the ink containing chamber is exchangeable to the negative pressure generating member containing chamber, wherein the buffer space in the negative pressure generating member containing chamber can be reduced under various environments and in the meantime, the supplying of ink can be performed under a stable condition of negative pressure during the operation of the ink containing chamber, while increasing the allowance to gaseous expansion of the external air introduced by the gas-liquid exchange. As the ink jet head cartridge to which this new liquid supply system is applied, the following configurations or the like are proposed:
(1) a configuration in which the recording head part and the negative pressure generating member containing chamber are integrated and the ink containing chamber can be installed and removed; and
(2) a configuration in which the negative pressure generating member containing chamber and the ink containing chamber can be installed to and removed from the recording head part.
The present invention is thought out by a more preferable idea of the present applicant and others, on the basis of this new ink jet head cartridge.
That is, as a result of an examination on the transportation and storing of the above described head cartridge, the following new problems have been found out:
As for the case (1), the interior of the recording head and the negative pressure generating member in the negative pressure generating member containing chamber are normally filled with ink or conservation liquid during the transportation and storing. Here, unless the communicating part with the ink containing chamber provided in the negative pressure generating member containing chamber is surely sealed, the viscosity of ink near the communicating part is increased to increase the resistance of the communicating part, and after that, even when the ink containing chamber is mounted, there is a possibility of causing a problem in the performance of supplying ink at the time of high speed supply, in the worst case.
As for the case (2), generally, in many cases, the change in atmospheric pressure and the change in temperature during the transportation and storing are larger than those during the use. Therefore, in some cases, the external air in the ink containing chamber expands to introduce the ink in the ink containing chamber to the negative pressure generating member containing chamber side. As a result of that, the internal volume in the ink containing chamber cannot be so much larger than that in the case of considering only the time when in use.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is thought out by the
Hattori Shozo
Hayashi Hiroki
Ishinaga Hiroyuki
Kitabatake Kenji
Koshikawa Hiroshi
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