JPH01180352A - Bubble jet printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable recording to be performed at a high speed, by a method wherein a photoabsorption layer is established on a transparent substrate, said photoabsorption layer is irradiated by focussed light beams to increase its temperature, ink is gasified by heat energy of an increased temperature part, and an ink drop is flown by pressure in said gasification time to perform printing. CONSTITUTION:Focussed light beam 23 penetrate a transparent substrate 22 to irradiate a photoabsorption layer 21, and the irradiated part is increased in temperature to become a heating part 12. In this case, when ink 9 in contact with the heating part 12 causes film boiling to come to be in a bubble 10 state, and a bubble 10 is generated in a frame structure 28, pressure is generated in the arrow A direction, and ink 9 becomes a liquid drop 11 via a nozzle hole 13. The liquid drop 11 is separated from the ink 9 by suction acting when the bubble 10 disappears and flies to record on recording paper. A recording speed of an obtained bubble jet printer becomes high.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a bubble jet printer using a laser.

[Conventional technology]

Various devices have been devised to perform recording by ejecting ink, but the representative ones that have reached practical use include those that use a piezo element and utilize the pressure of the piezo to eject droplets; In addition, current is passed through a heating resistor, the temperature of the heating element rises to vaporize the liquid, and the pressure during vaporization causes droplets to fly. Since these are well known, further explanation will be omitted.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

However, each of the above-mentioned conventional techniques has the following problems.

First, in the method of ejecting droplets using a piezo element, the ink passes through a flow path from a pressure chamber and is ejected from the tip of the nozzle. High precision formation of the path is an important factor. For this reason, various methods of creating flow channels with higher precision have been investigated, but currently the only method available is photo-etching technology, which is a relatively expensive problem even for serial devices with multiple nozzles. . Therefore, although this technology cannot be further developed into a production line, the cost is extremely high and it cannot be used on a commercial level. Therefore, with this type, it is not possible to obtain a printer capable of high-speed recording at a low price that is currently required.

Next, electricity is applied to a heating element, the temperature of the heating element rises to vaporize the ink, and the pressure of the vaporization causes the droplets to fly.This method has a structure that can be made into a line, allowing high-speed recording. However, in order to perform high-density recording in a line, for example, at a density of 16 dots/mm, the width of A4 size paper exceeds 200 ms, so the number of heating resistors must be 32.
Since there are more than 00 units, each of which must be controlled independently, control of the drive system becomes difficult. For this reason, even with this method, only the serial type is available at the commercial level.

The present invention is intended to solve these problems, and its purpose is to provide a bubble jet printer that is inexpensive, capable of high-speed recording, and capable of high-density recording.

[Means for solving problems]

The bubble jet printer of the present invention focuses light generated from a light source, locally raises the temperature of the light absorption layer with the focused light beam, and vaporizes the ink with the thermal energy of the heated portion of the light absorption layer. , is characterized in that recording is performed by causing ink droplets to fly due to the instantaneous pressure generated during the vaporization.

To explain in detail, a light-absorbing layer is provided in place of the heat-generating resistor element used in the past, and this light-absorbing layer is irradiated with a laser to locally raise the temperature. It generates and causes droplets to fly.

[Embodiment 1] FIG. 1 is a sectional view of only the main parts of a bubble jet printer showing an embodiment of the present invention.

In order to perform recording, a light beam 3 emitted from a light source 7 passes through a collimator lens 6, a polygon mirror 5, an f-theta lens 4, and further passes through a transparent substrate 2, and is irradiated onto a light absorption layer l. The process of droplet flight will be explained in detail with the partially enlarged sectional view of FIG. In FIG. 2, the focused light beam 23 passes through the transparent substrate 22 and is irradiated onto the light absorbing layer 21, and the irradiated portion is heated and becomes the heat generating portion 12. At this time, the ink 9 in contact with the heat generating part 12 undergoes film boiling due to the instantaneous high temperature, and becomes in a bubble 10 state. When a bubble 10 occurs in the configuration of the frame 28, pressure is generated in the direction of the arrow, and the ink 9 passes through the nozzle hole 13 and becomes a droplet 11. droplet 1
1 is separated from the ink 9 by the suction that occurs when the bubble 10 disappears, and the bubble 1 flies away and is recorded on the recording paper. The recording speed of the bubble jet printer obtained with such a configuration was as high as 6 ppm.

[Example 2] FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view of the structure of the light absorption layer, and in Example 1, the light absorption layer and ink are in direct contact. Based on the situation in Example 1, there is no problem in practical use, but some damage occurred due to ink sticking to the light absorption layer and cavitation, so in order to ensure reliability, the protective layer 14
Added. The thicker the protective layer 14, the higher the reliability.
On the other hand, it becomes difficult for the heat from the heat generating part of the light absorption layer to be transmitted.
Considering the balance between the two, the thickness of the protective layer 14 is 1 μm.
The following are appropriate. When the head obtained with this structure was installed in a printer and its reliability was confirmed, it was found that ink sticking and cavitation levels were better than in the structure of Example 1.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, according to the present invention, a light absorption layer is provided on a transparent substrate, the light absorption layer is irradiated with a focused light beam to raise its temperature, and the ink is vaporized by the thermal energy of the heating section. By performing recording by flying ink droplets using the pressure during vaporization, it has the effect of enabling high-speed recording because the dots are selected with light.

In addition, the structure of the heat generating part eliminates the need for the fine pattern processing of conventional thermal heads, resulting in lower manufacturing costs.Furthermore, the recording density can be controlled by the beam diameter of the light beam, making it possible to perform high-density recording. It has several useful effects.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of only the main parts showing an embodiment of the bubble jet printer of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the state during light irradiation. FIG. 3 shows a second embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1.21.31...Light absorption layer 2.22.32...Transparent substrate 3.23...Light ray 4...F-θ lens 5...Polygon mirror 60-・Collimator lens 7...・Light source 8.28... Frame 9... Ink 10 ・Φ base bubble 11... Droplet 12... Heat generating part 13... Nozzle hole 14... Protective layer and above

Claims (1)

[Claims] The light emitted from the light source is focused, the focused light beam locally raises the temperature of the light absorption layer, the thermal energy of the heated part of the light absorption layer vaporizes the ink, and the instantaneous A bubble jet printer that uses pressure to make ink droplets fly and record.