Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-kaisha

Hiroyuki Ishikawa

Yoshinori Osakabe

Yoshikazu Takahashi

Fumio Nakazawa

Hiroto Sugahara

Taichi Shirono

Akira Iriguchi

Sosuke Kuroyanagi

Yuji Koga

Naoya Okazaki

Shingo Ito

Kazuo Kobayashi

Toshio Sugiura

Yasuhiro Sekiguchi

Shin Hasegawa

Masatomo Kojima

Jun Morikawa

Masaharu Ito

Koichiro Hara

Masahiro Hoga

Susumu Ito

There is provides liquid discharging apparatus including: head having nozzle; reservoir configured to store the liquid such that liquid surface is positioned higher than opening of the nozzle in a state that the reservoir stores the liquid of maximum storable amount; and atmosphere port connecting gas layer and outside of the reservoir. Inner diameter d of the nozzle and head difference h satisfy expression of ρhd/σ cos θ≤4/g, provided that p is specific weight of the liquid, σ is surface tension of the liquid, θ is contact angle of the liquid in the nozzle and g is gravitational acceleration, the head difference h being difference in height between meniscus in the opening of the nozzle and the liquid surface in the state that the reservoir stores the liquid of the maximum storable amount.

Liquid discharging apparatus

A printing device is provided with a print head having a plurality of nozzles configured to eject ink droplets therefrom, a supplier configured to supply ink contained in a container to the print head, and a controller. The controller is configured to perform obtaining ink information having correlation with a height of a liquid surface of the ink contained in the container, obtaining subject image data representing an image to be printed, generating print data based on the subject image data, and causing the print head to eject ink droplets based on the print data. The generating includes adjusting the print data in accordance with the ink information.

Printing device, and non-transitory computer-readable recording medium therefor

A liquid ejection device includes a head having a nozzle, an element causing the nozzle to eject liquid, a reservoir configured to store the liquid to be supplied to the nozzle, and a controller. The controller is configured to change a drive signal to drive the element based on a quantity of the liquid stored in the reservoir.

Liquid ejection device

A liquid-droplet jetting apparatus includes a pressure-applying mechanism and a channel unit. The channel unit has a stacked body made of a plurality of metal plates. A plurality of pressure chambers arranged in a row in one direction, a plurality of manifolds which are arranged to be mutually adjacent and which extend in the one direction, and a plurality of communication channels each communicating one of the pressure chambers with one of the manifolds are formed in the stacked body. Here, the communication channels have channel resistances which are same. It is possible to divide the manifold into a plurality of divided manifold portions, and the construction of the channel unit as a whole can be made compact while suppressing the variation in jetting characteristic, thereby making the size of the liquid-droplet jetting apparatus to be small.

Liquid-droplet jetting apparatus and method for producing the same

In a liquid ejection apparatus, common liquid chambers adjacent to each other and connection passages extending from the adjacent common liquid chambers are separated by a partition wall. The partition wall has a first side surface and a second side surface opposite the first side surface. The first side surface define one of side surfaces of the common chamber and one of side surfaces of the connection passage extending from the common chamber. The second side surface defines one of side surfaces of the other common chamber and one of side surfaces of the other connection passage extending from the other common chamber. The partition wall has a curved surface connecting the first side surface to the second side surface in a vicinity of a position where the connection passages having the partition wall placed therebetween are connected to each other. A curvature of the curved surface is larger than a curvature of an arc having a diameter equal to a width of the partition wall.

Liquid ejection apparatus

An ink-jet head includes a channel unit which includes a plurality of pressure chambers, a vibration plate stacked on the channel unit, and a piezoelectric material layer arranged on the vibration plate. The piezoelectric material layer includes a first portion functioning as a piezoelectric actuator, and a second portion functioning as a piezoelectric transformer which amplifies a driving signal to be supplied to the piezoelectric actuator. Accordingly, it is possible to realize a small-size ink-jet head with a built-in piezoelectric amplifier.

Liquid-droplet jetting head and liquid-droplet jetting apparatus

An ink-jet head includes a channel unit in which two sets of a manifold and five pressure chambers adjacent to the manifold are formed, a vibration plate which is provided on an upper surface of the channel unit, a piezoelectric layer which is provided on an upper surface of the vibration plate, and a piezoelectric actuator which includes individual electrodes provided on an upper surface of the piezoelectric layer, corresponding to the pressure chambers. The vibration plate is arranged such that the vibration plate covers 10 pressure chambers and two manifolds, and on a lower surface of the vibration plate, in an area overlapping with the two manifolds, a recess having a cross-sectional shape of a taper is formed. Due to the recess, a pressure wave which is propagated to the manifold can be attenuated assuredly.

Liquid-droplet jetting apparatus and liquid transporting apparatus

An ink-jet head includes pressure chambers arranged in a row in a row-direction, and a manifold flow passage communicated with the pressure chambers and extending in the row-direction. An ink inflow port is formed at one end of the manifold flow passage. The manifold flow passage has a main portion, a connecting portion, and an extended portion which are arranged in this order from a side close to the ink inflow port. The manifold flow passage is communicated with the pressure chambers at the main portion. The main portion has a constant cross-sectional area greater than that of the connecting portion. A cross-sectional area of the extended portion is greater than that of the connecting portion. The pressure wave, generated in the pressure chamber and propagated to the manifold flow passage, can be efficiently attenuated by the manifold flow passage constructed as described above.

Liquid droplet-jetting apparatus and ink-jet printer

In an ink-jet head having a plurality of nozzles for discharging liquid droplets, vibration is generated in a direction connecting two nozzles, of the nozzles, by the discharge operation performed at least one of the nozzles. In particular, when the printing frequency is in the vicinity of the secondary mode frequency (for example, 27.5 kHz) of the proper vibration of the ink-jet head, the crosstalk easily arises. The crosstalk is hardly caused when the ratio of the secondary mode frequency of the ink-jet head to the printing frequency is any one of a value of not more than 0.85, a value in a range of 1.25 to 1.96, and a value of not less than 4.59.

Liquid droplet-jetting head, liquid droplet-jetting apparatus, and liquid droplet-jetting method

There is disclosed a liquid delivery apparatus comprising a pressure chamber accommodating a liquid and communicated with an opening, and a piezoelectric actuator plate which is disposed to close the pressure chamber and is deflected to deliver the liquid accommodated in the pressure chamber through the opening. The actuator plate has a laminated structure including: a piezoelectric layer which is deformable at least in a planar direction thereof by an application of an electric field to the piezoelectric layer; and a planar diaphragm laminated at one of opposite surfaces thereof to the piezoelectric layer, the one surface comprising a fixed portion which is fixed to the piezoelectric layer, and a non-fixed portion which is not fixed to the piezoelectric layer and is provided over a central part of the pressure chamber.

Liquid delivery apparatus

A droplet ejecting apparatus including at least one nozzle through which a droplet of a liquid is ejected; at least one pressure chamber which communicates with the at least one nozzle and in which the liquid is stored; at least one supply chamber from which the liquid is supplied to the at least one pressure chamber; and an actuator plate having at least one actuator portion which is interposed between the at least one pressure chamber and the at least one supply chamber and which is deformable so that a volume of the at least one pressure chamber is changed. The at least one actuator portion has a communication hole which is formed through a substantially central part thereof, and the at least one pressure chamber and the at least one supply chamber communicate with each other through the communication hole.

Droplet ejecting apparatus that contains an actuator plate having a communication hole

A droplet-jetting device, which is usable for an ink-jet recording apparatus, comprises a pressure chamber disposed between a cavity plate and a pressure-generating section of a piezoelectric actuator. The pressure-generating section and the cavity plate are connected by a connecting section. When a voltage is applied to the piezoelectric actuator, the pressure-generating section is elongated to depress the bottom of the pressure chamber downwardly so that the volume of the pressure chamber is increased. The droplet-jetting device is realized, in which the area of arrangement of the pressure-generating section is decreased to suppress the electrostatic capacity and the pull-eject can be performed by applying the voltage only when the device is driven.

Droplet-jetting device with pressure chamber expandable by elongation of pressure-generating section

In an ink droplet ejecting method and apparatus, by merely adding one pulse after a driving waveform for a main ejection of ink, without changing the driving voltage, it is possible to obtain an ink droplet of a desired volume and also possible to minimize the decrease of the ink droplet speed. The pulse width Wa of a jet pulse signal A is set equal to time T required for one-way propagation through an ink chamber of a pressure wave which is generated in the ink chamber, while the pulse width Wb of an additional pulse signal B is set at 0.2T to 0.6T, and a time difference between a fall timing of the jet pulse signal A and a rise timing of the additional pulse signal B is set at 0.3T to 0.7T, whereby an ink droplet being ejected is reduced in size and only one drive voltage is sufficient. Thus, the cost can be reduced, and a decrease of the ink droplet speed is prevented.

Ink droplet ejecting method and apparatus

An ink drop let jetting method and an apparatus are provided to easily and arbitrarily control a volume of ink droplets without changing the voltage value of a jet pulse. Thus, printing with a desired resolution may be achieved. When the volume of ink droplets (or printing density) is increased, the printing frequency of a timing period of the jet pulse is set to a reciprocal of an even-numbered multiple of the time T in which a pressure wave propagates within an ink chamber in one-way. Also, when the volume of ink droplets is decreased, the printing frequency is set to a reciprocal of an odd-numbered multiple of the time T in which a pressure wave propagates within an ink chamber in one-way. Alternatively, printing is executed at intermediate frequencies. According to this method, it becomes possible to print dots with an arbitrary resolution.

Method and apparatus for effecting the volume of an ink droplet

When a print data reception circuit receives a print command, the print data reception circuit transmits data indicating this to a drive signal generating circuit and also transmits data indicating a desired member of ejections per dot to a drive signal correction circuit Based on memory content of a reference data storage circuit the drive signal generating circuit produces a reference drive signal, which includes a predetermined maximum number of ejection pulses for printing each single dot, and transmits it to the drive signal correction circuit The drive signal correction circuit produces a print drive signal by removing unnecessary ejection pulses from the reference drive signal, in accordance with the desired number of ejection pulses indicated in the print command, and than transmits the print drive signal to a charge/discharge circuit The charge/discharge circuit controls electric potential difference between electrodes in accordance with high and low levels of the application drive signal. The piezoelectric material between the electrodes and deforms according to the electric potential difference, so that a desired number of ink droplets are ejected.

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Nisshin, Japan

Hiroyuki Ishikawa