Apparatus for cooling a print cartridge in an inkjet printer

摘要

An ink-cooled inkjet print cartridge (20) has an efficient heat exchanger (22) located on the back side of the substrate (30) that eliminates the need for heat sinks. All ink (38) flowing to the firing chambers (40) goes through the heat exchanger (22). The geometry of the heat exchanger (22) is chosen so that almost all the residual heat absorbed by the printhead substrate (30) is transferred to the ink (38) as it flows to the firing chambers (40). Additionally, the pressure drop of the ink flowing through the heat exchanger (22) is low enough so that it does not significantly reduce the refill rate of the firing chambers (40). The heat exchanger (22) can have one or more active heat exchanger sides. The heat exchanger has little thermal mass itself and significantly reduces the thermal mass of printhead by eliminating the need for a heat sink. This reduces the warm-up time of the printhead to a fraction of a second.