A print head of a continuous ink jet printer, including, in a cover: means for producing at least one ink jet; means for separating drops of jets intended for printing from those that do not serve for printing; a slot, enabling drops intended for printing to get out; a recovery gutter (7) for drops not intended for printing, the recovery gutter comprising an ink recovery volume (12); at least one detection conductor (20), arranged inside the head; means (16) for detecting a variation in impedance of at least one of the detection conductors when ink (21) is present in contact with the conductor or with a dielectric layer (22) in contact therewith.

An object of the present invention is to provide an inkjet recording device capable of adjusting a clearance between prints formed by two nozzles (114, 115), and capable of printing a print content at a high speed. In order to achieve the object, there is provided an inkjet recording device which has two sub-print heads including nozzles (114, 115), charging electrodes (116, 117), deflection electrodes (118, 119), and gutters (120, 121), in which the two nozzles are disposed in a deflection direction of ink particles, and which performs printing on a printed object (124) while moving the printed object (124) relative to the ink particles in a direction substantially perpendicular to the deflection direction of the ink particles, the inkjet recording device having a function for reducing a clearance between print results (125, 126), printed by the two nozzles (114, 115), by controlling a voltage applied to the charging electrodes (116, 117) and a voltage applied to the deflection electrode (118, 119).

The invention firstly relates to a print head of a continuous ink jet printer, comprising a first reservoir (12) and a second reservoir (22), arranged on either side of least one jet ejection nozzle (30, 30.sub.1-30.sub.n) to which they are connected, and a first actuator (16, 16.sub.1-16.sub.n) for applying a 1.sup.st pressure to the ink of the, or coming from the, 1.sup.st reservoir, and a second actuator (26, 26.sub.1-26.sub.n) for applying a 2.sup.nd pressure to the ink of the, or coming from the, 2.sup.nd reservoir, and a controller for controlling these first and second actuators, said controller being programmed to apply a variable difference between these 2 pressures.

A printing apparatus is provided and includes: a platen that supports a medium; an inkjet head provided to face the medium, the inkjet head ejecting an ink containing a charge controlling agent toward the medium by driving a drive element to land the charged ink droplet, which becomes a polarity of one of the positive polarity and the negative polarity, on the medium; and a voltage applying part that applies to at least one of the platen and the medium to have the other polarity of the positive polarity and the negative polarity.

An inkjet printing system may include an inkjet printing device, a print media finishing device, and a conditioner selectively coupled within a housing of the print media finishing device and in alignment with a print media exit of the inkjet printing device where the conditioner includes a number of heated pressure rollers to condition the print media prior to introduction into the print media finishing device.

A drop-on-demand printing method comprising performing the following steps in a printing head: discharging a first primary drop (x21A) of a first liquid to move along a first path; discharging a second primary drop (x21B) of a second liquid to move along a second path; controlling the flight of the first primary drop (x21A) and the second primary drop (x21B) to combine the first primary drop with the second primary drop into a combined drop (x22) at a connection point (x32) within a reaction chamber within the printing head so that a chemical reaction is initiated within a controlled environment of the reaction chamber between the first liquid of the first primary drop and the second liquid of the second primary drop; and controlling the flight of the combined drop (x22) at least by means of a stream of gas (x71A, x71B).

Apparatus for continuous ink jet printing, comprising: an ink system comprising an ink storage tank (15) operable to supply ink to a print head associated with the apparatus; a single cartridge connection (9) for releasable engagement with a fluid cartridge (8), the cartridge connection (9) comprising: a fluid connector (10) for engaging an outlet of a fluid cartridge; and a conduit configured to allow fluid to flow along a fluid pathway from a cartridge engaged with the cartridge connection, via the fluid connector, to the ink storage tank. The apparatus has a first configuration in which a solvent cartridge is engaged with the cartridge connection and in which the apparatus is configured to receive solvent from the engaged solvent cartridge, and a second configuration in which an ink cartridge is engaged with the cartridge connection and in which the apparatus is configured to receive ink from the engaged ink cartridge.

A continuous inkjet printer (50) has an ink droplet generator (52) and a controller (58) that varies a modulating voltage applied to the ink droplet generator (52) and measures corresponding breakup times of a jet of ink into ink droplets to obtain a portion of a characteristic of breakup time against modulating voltage. The controller (58) obtains a variation range, varies the modulating voltage over the variation range to obtain the portion of the characteristic, calculates a gradient from the portion of the characteristic, compares the gradient with a predetermined gradient and, depending on whether the calculated gradient is less than or greater than the predetermined gradient, generates an adjusted variation range that is displaced in a first sense or a second, opposite sense, respectively, relative to the variation range.

The invention describes a number of methods and apparatus for shortening the inter-message gap on a continuous inkjet printer. Included is a novel phase testing methodology.

A droplet discharge apparatus to discharge droplets while moved by a user includes a head to discharge a droplet onto a recording medium, a sensor to detect a movement amount of the droplet discharge apparatus in a predetermined period, and a memory to store determination information indicating whether droplet discharging has been instructed for each pixel of the image data. The droplet discharge apparatus further includes a processor configured to accumulate the movement amount to calculate a total movement amount of the droplet discharge apparatus; instruct droplet discharging from the head based on the total movement amount and the image data; instruct droplet discharging only for an unprinted pixel for which the determination information indicates that droplet discharging has not been instructed; and rewrite the determination information of the unprinted pixel to indicate that droplet discharging has been instructed, based on a predetermined condition.