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AssigneeHewlett-Packard Company
InventorsC. S. Chan, Conrad L. Wright, Gary E. Hanson
Estimating the term…
A hybrid type thermal ink jet (TIJ) pen and method of manufacture wherein a plurality of individual thin film ink jet printheads, each including an orifice plate, are selectively spaced on and secured to an insulating substrate having ink feed ports therein which supply ink to the printheads. Buss lines and integrated circuit driver-decoder packages may be mounted in a planar fashion with respect to the printheads and electrically interconnected to drive the printheads. Alternatively, the individual printheads may be mounted on a unitary insulating support and ink feed structure such as a ceramic substrate and interconnected to off-substrate TIJ driver circuitry by way of printed or silk-screened electrical leads. These leads may be laid down in a controlled pattern on the surface of the ceramic substrate and used to interconnect bonding pads on the TIJ printheads with the above off-substrate driver circuitry and power supplies. If desired, integrated circuit packages may be mounted in slots cut in the ceramic substrate in a planar arrangement with respect to the printheads.
A process for manufacturing an expandable array ink jet pen which comprises:
A hybrid expandable ink jet printhead array comprising a common insulating substrate having a plurality of ink feed ports therein and a plurality of discrete ink jet printheads therein aligned on said substrate and being fluidically connected, respectively, to said ink feed ports for receiving ink therefrom during an ink jet printing operation, each printhead including a supporting thin film substrate and an overlying orifice plate, and ink propulsion transducers on said thin film substrate for propelling ink through an opening or openings in said orifice plate, said printheads being individually mounted on said common insulating substrate, and each of said printheads being laterally offset with respect to each adjacent printhead by at least a distance equal to or greater than a width dimension of each printhead.
An ink jet pen comprising an insulating substrate and a plurality of discrete, thin film printheads mounted thereon, said printheads each having a plurality of ink propulsion transducers therein for propagating ink through ink ejection orifices in an orifice plate adjacent thereto, and separate ink flow paths feeding through said insulating substrate to said printheads, respectively, and each of said plurality of discrete thin film printheads being laterally offset with respect to each adjacent printhead by at least a distance equal to or greater than a width dimension of each thin film printhead, whereby large area bonding stresses between said printheads and said insulating substrate are minimized.
A method for manufacturing an ink jet pen so as to minimize bonding stresses otherwise created when large area metal orifice plates are bonded to matching large area insulating substrates and for further minimizing the effects of a mismatch in thermal expansion coefficients between a supporting substrate and ink ejection means disposed thereon, which comprises the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.