Ink cartridge including a unit to sense a remaining amount of ink
AssigneeSamsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
InventorsJae-cheol Lee, Dong-kee Jung, Seo-hyun Cho, Myung-song Jung
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Abstract
An ink cartridge includes a residual ink sensing unit having a simple structure of an upper electrode plate and a lower electrode plate to accurately detect a capacitance between the upper and lower electrode plate. Therefore, data of a remaining amount of ink is reliably measured, there is less possibility that an ink bag is damaged when the residual ink sensing unit is installed in the ink bag, and damage to the ink cartridge and defective printing due to unstable supply of ink and the missing of the time for replacing the ink cartridge are prevented.
Claims15
An ink cartridge comprising:
- a housing;
- an ink bag disposed in the housing and comprising:
- ink contained therein,
- a first side supported by an inner portion of the housing, and
- a second side that approaches the first side according to an ink consumption;
- and
- a residual ink sensing unit comprising:
- a lower electrode plate fixed to the second side of the ink bag,
- an upper electrode plate facing the lower electrode plate being movable to have a distance with the lower electrode plate that increases according to the ink consumption,
- wherein the reduced ink sensing unit senses an amount of ink remaining in the ink bag using a capacitance change between the upper and lower electrode plates.
An ink cartridge apparatus, comprising:
- a housing;
- an ink bag disposed within the housing and containing ink;
- and
- a residual ink sensing unit having a first electrode formed on the ink bag and a second electrode formed between the first electrode and the housing to sense an amount of ink remaining in the ink bag according to a distance between the first electrode and the second electrode,
- wherein the second electrode is movable between the ink bag and the housing.
A method to sense ink remaining in an ink cartridge with a housing and an ink bag, comprising:
- measuring a capacitance between a first electrode formed on the ink bag and a second electrode formed between the first electrode and the housing where the ink bag has a volume that reduces as ink leaves the cartridge;
- and
- increasing the distance between the first electrode and the second electrode at a predetermined volume of ink,
- wherein the second electrode is movable between the ink bag and the housing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.