Lexmark International, Inc.

Michael Scott Leiter

Benjamin Alan Askren

Paul Douglas Horrall

Larry Steven Foster

Donn Duane Bryant

David Amos Ward

James Philip Harden

Michael David Lattuca

Frank Marion Hughes

David Michael Cseledy

Darren Wayne Tosh

Brian David Smith

Robert Allen Samples

The invention relates to an ink cartridge body which is removably mountable in a printer carriage area of an ink jet printer and an alignment and latching mechanism for the ink cartridge body. The printer carriage area includes at least first and second spaced-apart elongate guide rails and the ink cartridge body includes a printhead and at least two bearing points at predetermined locations on the ink cartridge body, each of the bearing points disposed on the cartridge body for separately engaging at least one of the elongate guide rails for aligning and maintaining the printhead in a predetermined orientation relative to the print media in the printer. The invention substantially reduces the number of parts and tolerances thereof required for aligning a printhead relative to a print media by directly aligning the cartridge body rather than the carrier in the carriage area of the printer.

Ink cartridge body and carrier assembly

A carriage drive system for use in a serial printer includes a carriage movable in transverse directions across a print medium. Each of the transverse directions is substantially perpendicular to a print medium feed direction. A print cartridge is releasably mounted on the carriage and has at least one printhead. The at least one printhead has at least one ink jetting nozzle for jetting ink. The at least one ink jetting nozzle cyclically jets the ink at at least one jetting frequency. A carriage belt is mechanically coupled to the carriage. A transverse drive system drives the carriage belt in the transverse directions. A drive motor is coupled to the drive system. At least one cyclical disturbance exists due to the operation of the carriage belt, the drive system and/or the motor. The at least one cyclical disturbance has at least one disturbance frequency. At least one of the disturbance frequencies is an integer multiple of at least one of the jetting frequencies.

Carriage drive system for a serial printer which minimizes registration errors

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Lexington, KY, United States of America

Michael Scott Leiter