Adhesiveless printhead attachment for ink-jet pen

摘要

A method of attaching an ink-jet printhead assembly (14) to the headland region (42) of an ink-jet pen cartridge (10) to form a leak-proof seal without the use of any externally applied adhesive material. The cartridge includes a frame structure (32) fabricated of a rigid plastic frame member (34) formed of a first plastic material and a polymeric second material molded to the frame member. A headland region (42) is defined at the tip of a snout region (40) of the cartridge. An ink reservoir (12) is connected through a standpipe (44) defined by the rigid frame material with the headland region. The second plastic material defines a printhead assembly support structure which circumscribes a printhead and the standpipe. The printhead assembly is attached to the support structure after alignment by heatstaking the printhead assembly to the second plastic material defining the support structure. For an edge-fed printhead (170) secured to a back surface of a flexible polymer tape, the support structure is a racetrack (214) extending from a surface of the headland region, to which the back surface of the tape is heat staked. For a center-fed printhead die (140), the support structure is a pedestal (158) surrounding the standpipe, to which the die is bonded by melting and reflowing the pedestal material.