Back to results
US 7,597,426 B2Granted
Ink-jet head and ink-jet printer
AssigneeBrother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorAtsushi Ito
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeBrother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorAtsushi Ito
Estimating the term…
An ink-jet head includes: a cavity unit having a nozzle row in which nozzles are arranged in a row, a common ink chamber, and ink channels connecting the common ink chamber with the nozzles, respectively; at least two air discharge ports for air-bubble discharge provided substantially on an extension line of the nozzle row; and a single air discharge-channel connecting the at least two air discharge ports and a portion in the common ink chamber disposed at most downstream of a flow of the ink. The ink channels and the air discharge-channel have substantially the same shape, and an opening area of each of the discharge ports is substantially same as that of the nozzles, thereby making channel resistance in the air discharge-channel lower than that in the ink channels, thereby efficiently removing air bubble stagnated in the common ink chamber at the most downstream portion in the ink flow.
An ink-jet head comprising:
An ink-jet printer which performs printing by jetting an ink onto a recording medium, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
Drawings are temporarily unavailable. Open the PDF at USPTO
From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
Characterised by ink handling: for removing air bubbles
Structure of print heads with piezoelectric elements: of finger type, chamber walls consisting integrally of piezoelectric material
Of finger type, chamber walls consisting integrally of piezoelectric material: multi layer finger type piezoelectric element
Of finger type, chamber walls consisting integrally of piezoelectric material: finger type piezoelectric element on only one side of the chamber
About 1 year 6 months of term left · ends 17 Apr 2028 (estimated)
The present application claims priority from Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-320934 filed on Nov. 4, 2005, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet head which is constructed to distribute an ink supplied to a common ink chamber, and then discharge the distributed ink from nozzles, and an ink-jet printer which uses this ink-jet head.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an ink-jet head according to an embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is an exploded perspective view of the ink-jet head;
FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view taken along a line III-III shown in FIG. 1;
A basic embodiment of the present invention will be explained with reference to FIGS. 1 to 7.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a cavity unit 1 and a piezoelectric actuator 2 in an ink-jet head 100 of piezoelectric type in the embodiment, to which the present invention is applied. The piezoelectric actuator 2, which is a plate-type or plate-shaped actuator, is joined to the cavity unit 1 which includes a plurality of metallic plates, A flexible flat cable 3 for connection with an external equipment is overlapped with and joined to the upper surface of the plate-type piezoelectric actuator 2. In this ink-jet head 100, an ink is discharged downward from nozzles 4 which are open on a side of the lower surface of the cavity unit 1 (see FIG. 3).
As shown in FIG. 2, the cavity unit 1 has a structure in which total of eight thin plates, namely a nozzle plate 11, a spacer plate 12, a damper plate 13, two manifold plates 14a and 14b, a supply plate 15, a base plate 16, and a cavity plate 17 are laminated or stacked with an adhesive such that thin plate surfaces of the respective plates are facing mutually and the plates are joined to overlap with one another.