Article,
Analysis on Behavior of Small Ink Drops Ejected from Ink Jet Printhead
NIHON GAZO GAKKAISHI (Journal of the Imaging Society of Japan), 48 (4): 244-254 (2009)in Japanese.
DOI: 10.11370/isj.48.244
Abstract
A trajectory of ink drop ejected from printhead is affected by airflow generated by media moving in parallel with printhead, and dots are formed at undesirable position on a paper. Ink drop becomes smaller for high image quality, or relative moving velocity of paper and printhead becomes higher for high speed printing, this problem
will be serious. In this paper, the trajectory of flying ink drops was analyzed by computational fluid dynamics under the model where paper moves, and the change of orbit was accounted by investigating airflow conditions. In the simple case where single drop was ejected from a nozzle, dot position error dependencies on drop initial velocity, drop volume or paper moving velocity were examined. Relative displacement among dots formed by various volumes of drops was also studied. In the case where ink drops were ejected from multi-nozzles continuously, the effect of print pattern to dot displacement was examined. It also became clear that the effect of print pattern depends on nozzle position. The explanation of this dependency on print pattern or nozzle position was attempted by analyzing the airflow change caused by colliding against continuous ink drop flux.
