Waste ink collecting device
AssigneeBrother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorNobuaki Oku
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A waste ink collecting device has an ink tank accommodating an ink absorber that absorbs unnecessary ink discharged from a printhead of an ink-jet printer. The discharged ink is dropped onto the ink tank. An inlet of the dropped ink is formed on a top plate of the ink tank, and the dropped ink enters the ink tank through the inlet. The ink tank has a partition wall that defines, inside the partition wall, a passage of the ink entered through the inlet to an inner bottom surface of the ink tank. The partition wall prevents the dropped ink from directly striking the ink absorber. The ink dropped on the inner bottom surface of the ink tank is absorbed by the ink absorber through a bottom surface thereof.
Claims23
A waste ink collecting device that collects unnecessary ink discharged from a printhead of an ink-jet printer, comprising:
- an ink tank;
- an ink absorber accommodated in said ink tank, said ink absorber absorbing the unnecessary ink discharged from the printhead of the ink-jet printer, an inlet of the dropped ink being formed on a top plate of said ink tank, the discharged ink being dropped onto said ink tank, the dropped ink entering said ink tank through said inlet;
- and
- a partition wall provided in said ink tank, said partition wall defining, inside the partition wall, a passage of the ink entered through said inlet to an inner bottom surface of said ink tank, said partition wall preventing the dropped ink from directly striking the ink absorber, the ink dropped on the inner bottom surface of said ink tank being absorbed by said ink absorber through a bottom surface thereof.
The waste ink collecting device according to claim 7, wherein at least one waste ink outlet opening is formed on a lower portion of said partition wall, the passage defined inside said partition wall communicating through said at least one waste ink outlet opening with an area outside said partition wall and on the inner bottom surface of said ink tank.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.