More and more drop-on-demand inkjet printheads are entering the market differing in the principle of droplet ejection such as bubble-jet and piezo technologies. Every major player in this field has his own technology patented, which has its advantages and drawbacks. In addition, the patent situation in this area turns out to be quite demanding for any independent printhead manufacturer to enter the market and to be successful, as the main patent owners have a rather restrictive license policy. Therefore, independent companies find themselves often unable to manufacture their own inkjet printhead based on the current technologies.In this paper, the technology of an independent proprietary inkjet printhead is presented. It demonstrates the simple working principle and the wide range of applications such as printing, fluid dispensing or defined droplet formation. Special emphasis is directed to a variation of basic printhead designs necessary to meet the specific needs of each application. Moreover, the function and the innovative aspects of this technology are described in details with examples of potential industrial applications.
Joachim Kretschmer, Carsten Tille, Ingo Ederer, "A Drop-on-Demand Inkjet Printhead for a Wide Range of Applications" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP14), 1998, pp 31 - 35, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.1998.14.1.art00008_1