Method of fabricating thermal ink jet printheads

A method of fabricating a plurality of ink jet printheads from at least two substrates having confronting surfaces aligned and bonded together, wherein the confronting surface of one substrate contains a plurality of sets of equally spaced, linear arrays of heating elements and addressing electrodes having terminals for enabling the individual addressing of each heating element with current pulses, and wherein the confronting surface of the other substrate contains a plurality of sets of equally spaced, parallel grooves and a recess, one end of each set of grooves communicate with an ink supply means, the fabricating method comprising the steps of:

• (a) removing the substrate material above the electrode terminals on the other substrate and thus producing a plurality of separate portions in which each contain one set of grooves and interconnected recesses;
• (b) dicing the end portions from each separate substrate portion containing the ends of the set of grooves opposite the ends communicating with the ink supply means to form a nozzle face containing open groove ends, the open groove ends to serve subsequently as droplet emitting nozzles, the dicing being accomplished by a first circular, resin-bonded blade having a predetermined diamond particle size and density, the blade having a predetermined diameter and thickness, and operated at a speed of greater than 32,000 inches per second with a predetermined depth of cut, so that the entire region containing grooves are cut;
• and
• (c) dicing in a direction perpendicular to the nozzle faces to separate the rows of printheads into individual printheads.