Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Controller
Reexamination Certificate
2001-10-02
2003-04-29
Barlow, John (Department: 2853)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Controller
C347S019000, C347S014000, C347S065000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06554383
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting head for ejecting a desired liquid by generation of bubble occurring when thermal energy is exerted on the liquid and to a head cartridge and a liquid ejecting device incorporating the liquid ejecting head.
More specifically, the present invention relates to a liquid ejecting head capable of replaceably being mounted on a plurality of devices and to a head cartridge and a liquid ejecting device incorporating the liquid ejecting head.
The present invention is the invention that can be applied to liquid ejecting heads having movable members arranged to be displaced by use of the generation of bubble, and the like.
The present invention is the invention applicable to equipment such as a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile machine having a communication system, a word processor having a printer portion or the like, and an industrial recording device combined with one or more of various processing devices, with which recording is effected on a recording medium such as paper, thread, fiber, textile, leather, metal, plastic material, glass, wood, ceramic material, and so on.
It is noted here that “recording” in the present invention means not only provision of an image having meaning, such as characters or graphics, on a recorded medium, but also provision of an image having no meaning, such as patterns, on the medium.
2. Related Background Art
One of the conventionally known recording methods is an ink jet recording method for imparting energy of heat or the like to ink, using a heat generating element as an energy generating element, so as to cause a state change accompanied by a quick volume change of ink (generation of bubble), thereby ejecting the ink through an ejection outlet by acting force based on this state change, and depositing the ink on a recorded medium, thereby forming an image, which is so called as a bubble jet recording method. A recording apparatus using this bubble jet recording method is normally provided, as disclosed in the bulletin of U.S. Pat. No. 4,723,129 etc., with ejection outlets for ejecting the ink, ink flow paths in communication with the respective ejection outlets, and electrothermal transducers as energy generating means for ejecting the ink located in the ink flow path.
Another known method is ink jet ejection with a piezo-element as an energy generating element to eject ink by mechanical displacement of the piezo-element.
Particularly, the bubble jet recording method permits high-quality images to be recorded at high speed and with low noise and in addition, because a head for carrying out this recording method can have the ejection outlets for ejecting the ink as disposed in high density, it has many advantages; for example, high-resolution recorded images or even color images can be obtained readily by compact apparatus. Therefore, this bubble jet recording method is used in many office devices including printers, copiers, facsimile machines, and so on in recent years and further is becoming to be used for industrial systems such as textile printing apparatus.
With spread of use of the ink jet technology such as the bubble jet technology in products in wide fields, a variety of demands described below are increasing these years.
Especially, in the case of the conventional ink jet devices, the most of them allowed fixed voltage and current of electric energy to be received by the ink jet head mounted in the device, so that the mountable ink jet head was fixed for every ink jet device. There were proposals of some ink jet heads capable of being mounted on plural devices, but in such cases, the devices were arranged to supply common energy to the ink jet heads.
It was, however, not possible to apply a common head to devices different in energy quantity supplied to the head, for example, to a plurality of devices of different supply voltages.
Especially, under such circumstances that energy saving of device itself was intended as also in recent years, there was a problem to be solved that when a head compatible with a device designed in an energy-saving arrangement was attempted to be applied to another device produced without design of such energy-saving arrangement, the head did not work well.
Returning to the principle of liquid droplet ejection, some of the inventors reviewed the fundamental ejection characteristics of the conventional method for ejecting the liquid by forming the basically conventional bubble (especially, the bubble generated upon film boiling) in the liquid flow path, and proposed the liquid ejecting method for arranging the movable member so as to face the bubble generation region and for positively controlling the bubble, thereby greatly improving the ejection efficiency etc.
A novel ink jet head employing such a liquid ejecting method with improved ejection efficiency can achieve stable ejection performance of ink by lower power than the conventional ink jet heads. Therefore, printers ready for the novel ink jet head permit driving voltage for ejection of ink to be set lower, thereby achieving power saving. However, printers ready for the conventional ink jet heads had a problem that they were unable to use the novel ink jet head, because of the difference in driving power.
In order to allow mounting of the both conventional ink jet head and novel ink jet head with improved ejection efficiency, it is also conceivable to provide a plurality of power supply systems inside a recording apparatus so as to be ready for future ink jet heads of lowered driving power, but it is not preferable because of problems of increase in cost and increase in the size of apparatus.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is also a subject of the present invention to enable a liquid ejecting head with high ejection efficiency capable of achieving energy saving to be mounted on various types of devices.
A first object of the present invention is to provide a liquid ejecting head and a head cartridge capable of performing good ejection, that can be mounted on devices mutually different in quantity of electric energy supplied to the liquid ejecting head.
A second object of the present invention is to provide a liquid ejecting head etc. applicable to various devices by improving the novel liquid ejecting head with increased ejection efficiency and ejection pressure, based on basic control of the generated bubble.
A third object of the present invention is to provide a liquid ejecting head etc. that can adjust the electric energy received from a device on which the head is mounted, to an appropriate energy quantity.
Typical features of the present invention for achieving the above objects are as follows.
The present invention provides a liquid ejecting head comprising an ejection outlet for ejecting a liquid, a liquid flow path in fluid communication with the ejection outlet, and an ejection energy generating element provided corresponding to the liquid flow path and arranged to receive an electric signal to generate ejection energy,
the liquid ejecting head having energy adjusting means for adjusting a quantity of energy supplied from the outside to the liquid ejecting head and utilized as said electric signal.
The present invention also provides a liquid ejecting head that can be replaceably mounted on a plurality of devices.
The present invention also provides a liquid ejecting head in which the foregoing ejection energy generating element is a heat generating element, which supplies thermal energy to the liquid supplied into the liquid flow path to generate a bubble therein and to eject the liquid through the ejection outlet by pressure upon generation of the bubble.
The present invention also provides a liquid ejecting head in which the foregoing energy adjusting means is means for converting a voltage of the aforementioned energy.
The present invention also provides a liquid ejecting head for ejecting ink as the liquid.
The present invention also provides a head cartridge comprising the liquid ejecting head constructed in either one of the above
Asakawa Yoshie
Ishinaga Hiroyuki
Kashino Toshio
Kohno Tetsushi
Matsui Shinya
Barlow John
Stephens Juanita
LandOfFree
Liquid ejecting head and head cartridge capable of adjusting... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Liquid ejecting head and head cartridge capable of adjusting..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Liquid ejecting head and head cartridge capable of adjusting... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3023677