JPS5918226B2 - Recording head manufacturing method - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a recording head having a multi-stylus (multi-stylus electrode) used in facsimile machines and the like, and further relates to a recording head having a multi-stylus electrode formed on an insulating substrate. The present invention relates to a manufacturing method.

Conventional multi-needle electrodes used in facsimile machines are constructed by fixing a large number of thin insulated metal wires in a row at equal intervals, or by forming a copper-clad surface on an insulating substrate and etching this copper-clad surface. It had been.

However, the method of fixing the thin metal wires described above requires a large number of man-hours and is complicated, and the installation work of attaching each electrode to its drive circuit is also complicated.

On the other hand, in the above etching method, it is easy to create multi-needle electrodes, and the drive circuit for the multi-needle electrodes can also be created on the same insulating substrate, so it can be done accurately, inexpensively, and
Although it can be formed compactly, it has the disadvantage that the thickness of the multi-needle electrode cannot be increased.

In other words, the thickness of the metal surface on the insulating substrate is controlled by the density of the pattern formed on the metal surface (in this case, the density of multi-needle electrodes), so the higher the pattern density, the more difficult it is to obtain the required thickness. I can't.

For example, if the density of the multi-needle electrode is 8 needles/mm, the maximum thickness can only be about 50 ttm. With such a thickness, it cannot be used in a recording method that causes wear, such as a recording method in which a multi-needle electrode is in direct contact with the recording paper, and the dots formed on the recording paper by such a multi-needle electrode cannot be used. Since the width in the sub-scanning direction cannot be made sufficiently wide, the quality of the print obtained is also not good. Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 1, the electrode 12 formed by etching on the insulating substrate 11 should originally have a rectangular cross section, but it was not finished in a sharp shape, and the electrode structure collapsed, resulting in poor quality. It was not possible to obtain a good image quality.

The present invention obviates the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art, and
A multi-needle electrode auxiliary circuit is formed by etching the conductive member on the insulating substrate, and then a metal layer is formed thereon to increase the thickness, and the end portion for forming the multi-needle electrode group on the insulating substrate is cut. This paper presents a method for manufacturing a recording head in which multi-needle electrodes are formed. Below, the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings and an embodiment thereof. FIG. Needle electrode portion 14 (as a multi-needle electrode portion will be formed here through the process described below, it will also be referred to as a multi-needle electrode forming end portion).

) and a drive circuit (attached circuit) 15 for driving such a multi-needle electrode (however, only a part of it is shown in FIG. 2 to avoid complication of the drawing), In the present invention, only the drive circuit 15 is formed on the substrate in advance (the multi-needle electrode section 14 is left as a copper foil), and then metal plating is applied on the copper foil 20 on which the multi-needle electrode 16 is to be formed. is applied to a thickness of about 60 μm (preferably a metal with higher wear resistance than copper, such as chromium or tinium) to obtain a metal layer as shown in FIG.
0 are cut together with a laser beam 19 at a constant interval D1 to obtain a multi-needle electrode group as shown in FIG.
Further, in this embodiment, it is of course possible to form the metal layer 21 shown in FIG. 3 by pasting a metal sheet instead of the metal plating. Further, in this embodiment, it has been described that only the drive circuit 15 is formed on the substrate 13 in advance, but the metal layer 21 may be made of a material that is not corroded by the etching solution used when forming the drive circuit 15 by etching copper foil or the like. When using this method, after covering the copper foil part constituting the multi-needle electrode part with the metal layer 21 in advance, the entire board is immersed in an etching solution, so that when forming the drive circuit,
The copper foil constituting the multi-needle electrode is masked using a special masking means, and then etched to form the drive circuit, and then this masking means is removed and the mask is applied during plating. This eliminates the hassle of applying and removing the mask.

FIG. 5C shows a recording trajectory by the recording head of the present invention obtained as described above, FIG. 5A shows a recording trajectory using a large number of thin metal wires, and FIG. 5B shows a conventional print. Compared to a recording trajectory using a multi-needle electrode using a plate, the gap D in the sub-scanning direction can be made smaller, and it is also easy to obtain an arbitrary thickness according to the amount of step feed in the sub-scanning direction.

As described above, the method for manufacturing a multi-needle electrode according to the present invention makes it possible to obtain thick electrodes on an insulating substrate, and also to easily improve the abrasion resistance of the electrodes. It is possible to obtain a multi-needle electrode.

Note that in the above embodiments, only a laser beam is used as an example of the cutting means, but it goes without saying that other cutting means including mechanical cutting means can be used.

Moreover, the above-mentioned one drive circuit (attached circuit) refers to a circuit in a broad sense, and is a general term for anything other than the multi-needle electrode or the part that functions as an electrode.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a sectional view showing a conventional multi-needle electrode, Fig. 2 is a perspective view showing a substrate, Figs. FIG.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. An etching process for forming an auxiliary circuit for the multi-needle electrode by etching a portion of the conductive member on the insulating substrate excluding the region where the multi-needle electrode is to be formed; A covering step of forming a metal layer different from the conductive member before or after the etching step on a region where the needle electrode is to be formed, and forming a multi-needle electrode by cutting the conductive member and the metal layer together. A recording head manufacturing method comprising the steps of: 2. The recording head manufacturing method according to claim 1, wherein the coating step includes forming a coating with a metal layer that is not attacked by the etching before the etching step.