Inkjet devices, piezo and thermal, are common for both personal and industrial printing purposes. Most commonly, such devices are found in consumer homes as a means to create high quality prints and photos. In consumer applications there is a high need for reliable performance with minimal effort from the consumer. Because of this all existing consumer printing devices contain sophisticated processes for maintaining a high print quality. It is common for consumer inkjet printing devices to contain thousands of individual nozzles with each nozzle as small as 5-20 microns. Additionally, most inks in such devices are volatile and are prone to drying out quickly when exposed to air. Due to the small and numerous nozzles and fast dry times, it is difficult to keep all nozzles working properly over the course of thousands of printed pages and potentially long periods of time between prints. Due to these requirements much effort has been taken by printer manufacturers to devise mechanisms that keep the printing nozzles performing well. Most consumers have no knowledge of all of the servicing that occurs to ensure good print quality as it occurs automatically.
While servicing nozzles of a stationary inkjet printing device is known, there has been little need to consider how to automatically service inkjet nozzles for a handheld printing device. Handheld inkjet printing devices are uncommon and usually used for industrial tasks like labeling boxes during manufacturing. In such cases the servicing needs of nozzles is performed manually. These handheld printers require removal of the inkjet cartridge after each use and manually wiping and capping the printhead. For such industrial applications this may be acceptable. However, there has not been the need to create an automated servicing solution for handheld printing devices.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds