Continuous ink-jet printing method and apparatus with nozzle clusters

Abstract

An apparatus for printing an image is provided. The apparatus includes an ink droplet forming mechanism operable to selectively create a stream of ink droplets having a plurality of volumes, a means for selectively obtaining droplet coalescence between adjacent droplet streams, and a droplet deflector having a gas source. The ink droplet producing mechanism has at least one physical grouping of nozzles and includes heater positioned proximate to the nozzles. The nozzles in a group are activated in a substantially identical manner. The gas source is positioned at an angle with respect to the stream of ink droplets and is operable to interact with the stream of ink droplets thereby separating ink droplets having one of the plurality of volumes from ink droplets having another of the plurality of volumes. The heater may be selectively actuated at a plurality of frequencies to create the stream of ink droplets having the plurality of volumes. By selectively causing coalescence between drops originating from different nozzles to occur, larger separations of printing and non-printing droplet streams can be obtained.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.