A continuous ink jet printhead with improved drop formation and apparatus using same

摘要

An ink jet printer includes a print head (17) having a nozzle (7) from which a stream of ink droplets is emitted. A mechanism is adapted to adjust a characteristic of the emitted ink droplets such that selected pairs of droplets emitted from the nozzle (7) coalesce to form larger droplets while other ones of droplets emitted from the nozzle (7) do not coalesce. A droplet deflector (40) imposes a force (46) on the droplets at an angle greater than zero with respect to the stream of ink droplets. The droplet deflector (40) is adapted to interact with the stream of ink droplets to thereby separate non-coalesced ink droplets from coalesced ink droplets. <IMAGE>