Loading patent…
AssigneeLexmark International, Inc.
InventorsGregory Alan Long, James Harold Powers, Matthew Joe Russell, David Amos Ward
Estimating the term…
A printhead apparatus for filtering ink which includes an elongate open-ended trough having a bottom wall and opposing end walls and opposing side walls attached to the bottom wall, an ink exit port attached to the bottom wall between the opposing end walls and side wall, a filter member disposed in the open-ended trough between the end walls and the side walls and an elongate cover assembly attached to the end walls and the side walls covering the trough defining a filter chamber containing filter element, the cover assembly containing an ink inlet valve and a gas outlet valve. The device is disposed between an ink cartridge and an ink jet pen containing one or more printheads and is activated automatically when a new ink cartridge is installed on the pen thereby removing unwanted air and gas bubbles from the filter chamber and providing gas free ink to the pen and one or more printheads.
An apparatus for filtering ink for an ink jet pen comprising an elongate open-ended trough having a bottom wall, opposing end walls and opposing side walls attached to the bottom wall, a tubular filtered ink exit port attached to the bottom wall between the opposing end walls and side walls, said ink exit port being separate from the ink jet pen and being insertable into an aperture in the ink jet pen containing one or more printheads, a filter element diagonally disposed in the open-ended trough between the end walls and the side walls, and an elongate cover assembly attached to the end walls and the side walls covering the trough defining a filter chamber containing the ink filter element, wherein the cover assembly contains art ink inlet valve and a gas outlet valve, and wherein the filter element provides a substantially smooth transition from within the filter chamber to adjacent the gas outlet valve.
An ink jet printer comprising an ink jet pen containing one or more permanent or semi-permanent printheads, each of the printheads having an ink flow path in flow communication therewith, the pen including one or more removable ink cartridges attached thereto, each of the one or more cartridges having an ink feed port corresponding to one ink flow path for ink flow communication between the one or more cartridges and the one or more printheads, the pen including a separately attachable filtration and air removal system for each ink feed port, each filtration and air removal system being attached to the pen and the corresponding ink feed port, each filtration and air removal system containing a filter chamber for providing filtered ink to the pen and for removing air and gas bubbles from the filtered ink, each filtration and air removal system having a tubular ink outlet port for connection to a corresponding aperture in the pen so that the filtration and air removal system is disposed between the pen and the corresponding one of the one or more ink cartridges, each of the one or more cartridges having a bellows device attached thereto and each filtration and air removal system having an air outlet port in flow communication with the corresponding bellows device for removing air and gas bubbles from the filter chamber, wherein each filter chamber includes a diagonally disposed filter element providing a substantially smooth transition from within the corresponding filter chamber to adjacent the corresponding air outlet port.
A method for filtering ink and removing air and gas bubbles from ink fed to an ink jet pen which comprises:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.