Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-Kaisha

Masaki Takatsugi

Makoto Suzuki

Naohisa Kinoshita

Takamitsu Kawai

Minoru Sakanobe

Naoto Iwao

Tetsuya Kitamura

A printer cartridge stationarily fixes an ink package and movably provides a print head, and a separate printer body movably provides a carriage. Prior to mounting of the printer cartridge onto the printer body, the print head is held at a fixed position of the printer cartridge by a pressing member. Because the print head is pressed downward by the pressing member, mounting the cartridge onto the printer body will insert the print head into the carriage. After the print head is inserted into the carriage, a pawl and a protrusion of the carriage fit into an engagement groove and an indentation, respectively, in the print head. Also another protrusions of the print head are supported on an upper edge of the carriage. As a result, the print head is mounted onto the carriage in association with mounting of the print cartridge onto the printer body. A printer cartridge has a retaining member formed with an engaging groove, and the print head has a rectangular protrusion. When the printer cartridge is detached from the printer body, the rectangular protrusion is trapped by the upwardly moving retaining member and is engaged with the engaging groove. Thus, the print head is automatically disengaged from the carriage in interlocking relation with detachment of the printer cartridge from the printer body.

Ink jet printer including detachable print cartridge

An ink package has a shape restoring ability and is made of a laminated structure film material in which multiple film sheets of polyethylene or similar material are laminated. Therefore, the ink supplying pressure for ink supplied to the print head is kept at a negative pressure. Since the ink extracting member is formed into a needle-like hollow body, the member can be easily stuck into a recess formed at the ink package.

Ink supplying device

An ink cartridge takes the form of a bag, and is formed out of a laminate which includes films laminated together. Compressive stress exists in one of the films. Therefore, when a hollow needle pierces the bag, the stress causes this film to function in such a manner as to block the pierced hole. This brings the film into close contact with the needle, preventing ink leakage securely. It is also possible to prevent the cracks developed in the laminate by external injuries from progressing. It is possible to form the laminate by bonding a plurality of films having different coefficients of thermal expansion together at high temperature, and cooling the bonded films. It is possible to form the bag by heat-sealing the laminate.

Ink cartridge, process for forming it and liquid ink feeder

An aperture electrode member includes an insulating sheet having a plurality of apertures formed in a row therein, and a control electrode formed on the insulating sheet on the upper side of each of the apertures. On the face of the insulating sheet opposite to the face on which the apertures are formed, a coating layer serving as an oxide fine particle layer is formed at portions of insulating sheet at which the insulating sheet contacts with toner particle carried on the toner carrying roller. A coating layer can be formed by dispersing carbon serving as an antistatic agent and oxide fine particle silica serving as a fluidity increasing agent into a binder, applying the mixture to the insulating sheet to form a film and baking to harden it.

Image forming apparatus

A color image output apparatus having a plurality of single color image forming units for different colors arrayed in-line. Each single color image forming unit includes a toner box, a photosensitive drum and a transfer roller, and provides a position adjusting unit for moving its image transfer portion in a direction toward and away from or normal to a running direction of an intermediate image transfer belt. Each position adjusting unit includes a motor fixed to the toner box, a thread fixed to an output shaft of the motor, an arm fixed to a main frame and engageable with the thread. Each rotation of each motor provides independent movement of each toner box of each single color image forming unit. This movement provides inclination of the intermediate image transfer belt between neighboring image transfer portions.

Growing community of inventors

Toyohashi, Japan

Masaki Takatsugi