US 5,006,869 AGranted

Charged particle printer

AssigneeDelphax Systems

InventorsW. R. Buchan, Robert S. McCallum

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Abstract

The invention provides an electrostatic print cartridge for use in placing electrostatically charged dots on a charge receiving surface to build a latent image for subsequent toning. The cartridge includes a rigid spine to prevent the cartridge from bending during construction; a dielectric substrate attached to the spine with driver electrodes arranged in parallel lines between the spine and the dielectric substrate; and finger electrodes arranged on the opposite side of the substrate intersecting the driver electrodes and defining a matrix of apertures aligned with the intersection points of the driver and finger electrodes. The apertures in each finger electrode cover a segment of a complete image and are arranged so that the sequence of creating dots is such that primary dots are laid down separated from one another in each segment and subsequently secondary or intermediate dots are placed in spaces between the primary dots as the segment is filled with dots.

Claims11

Dependent claims

A print cartridge for charged particle deposition of latent images on a receptor surface adapted to move longitudinally, the cartridge comprising:

driver electodes extending transversely with respect to said direction;
dielectric means covering the electrodes;
finger electrodes on the dielectric means extending angularly with respect to the driver electrodes, the finger and driver electrodes being separated physically from one another by the dielectric means, the finger electrodes defining apertures where the finger electrodes cross the driver electrodes to thereby define edge structures for charged particle generation upon selectively energizing the driver and finger electrodes to place dots on selected segments of the print cartridge, the segment for each finger electrode being immediately adjacent a segment of another finger electrode and the apertures being arranged in relation to the desired image such that when the image is to be a continuous line of contiguous dots, at least some of the apertures activated in each of the finger electrodes to place a dot in each segment are spaced from transversely from an adjacent aperture in the same finger electrode by an unequal whole number of dot positions, and in which the first dot is a primary dot, the electrodes being operable to energize the apertures in sequence along the length of the finger electrodes to create further primary dots which are separated from one another and then to complete the line by creating secondary dots between the primary dots.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.