The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 01, 1997
Filed:
Apr. 08, 1994
William H Schwiebert, Cardiff, CA (US);
Gerold G Firl, Poway, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A service station includes a sled that is mounted to the printer's chassis having caps and wipers mounted on the sled for each of the printer's movable carriage-mounted printheads. The sled and the chassis, and the sled and carriage, are each cam-coupled so that movement of the carriage produces slight vertical and lateral movement of the sled out of a nominal position to automatically place the sled in one of three primary positions relative to the carriage: an elevated position for capping the printheads, an intermediate position for wiping the printheads and a lowered position for free reciprocal movement of the carriage without interference between the printheads and either the caps or the wipers. In one embodiment, wiping structure according to the invention includes a wiper, a wiper mount on which the wiper is mounted, and a wiper frame on which the wiper mount is mounted. Injection molding the wipers onto the wiper mount is a simple and inexpensive method for producing wipers according to the invention. The wiper structure can be easily assembled to and removed from the remainder of the service station structure without need to use tools such that the remainder of the original service station structure can continue to be used.