Back to results
US 6,886,918 B2Granted
Ink jet printhead with moveable ejection nozzles
AssigneeSilverbrook Research Pty Ltd
InventorsKia Silverbrook, Gregory John McAvoy
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An inkjet printhead with an array of ink chambers, each with an outer wall defining an ink ejection port and having at least one actuator. The outer wall faces the print media substrate during use wherein the actuator move the ejection port away from the media substrate in order eject ink through the port. This arrangement does not have any actuators within the chamber to slow ink refill and the return of the outer wall to its quiescent state assists ink refill.
Claims9
An inkjet printhead for printing on a media substrate, the printhead comprising:
- a wafer substrate defining a plurality of nozzle chambers for storing ink to be ejected, each of the nozzle chambers having an outer wall that faces the media substrate during use, the wall having an ink ejection port and a plurality of actuators in the wall for moving the ink ejection port away from the media substrate to eject ink from the corresponding nozzle chamber via the ink ejection port, wherein the actuators include a surface which bends inwards away from the centre of the nozzle chamber upon actuation, and wherein the actuators are actuated by means of a thermal actuator device having a conductive resistive heating element encased within a material having a high coefficient of thermal expansion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.