Ink To Multiple Print Heads
November 14, 2022
For inkjet presses with a few (say, one or two) print modules in each color channel, designing expensive ink delivery modules for larger systems is not desirable and significantly increases the total cost of the system. Therefore, it is expected to provide a low cost ink delivery system suitable for smaller inkjet presses. Further, it is expected to provide a low-cost alternative to the ink delivery modules described in us
Technology-enabled inkjet printers are commercially available for many different printing formats, including work-at-home (" soho ") printers, label printers, and wide-format printers. Printers typically include one or more fixed inkjet print heads that are user replaceable. For example, soho printers include a single user replaceable multicolor print head, high-speed inkjet presses include multiple user replaceable monochrome print heads aligned along the medium feed direction, and wide-format printers include multiple user replaceable print heads in a staggered overlapping arrangement to span a wide page width.
As the number of print heads increases, supplying ink to multiple print heads may be problematic. In order to maintain high print quality, each print head shall receive ink from the shared ink storage at approximately the same ink pressure.
us 10,252,540 describes an ink delivery system suitable for a digital inkjet press with multiple print heads in the same color channel, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. The system uses total pressure control in a common ink delivery module and local fine pressure control in each printing module containing the corresponding print head. Due to the high demand for ink flow from multiple inkjet print heads, the diaphragm pump used to control the ink pressure in the ink delivery module must be a large, high quality pump. Accordingly, the ink delivery module is necessarily an expensive part of the entire ink delivery system, mainly because of the high cost of the diaphragm pump.
