Method of operating an ink jet to achieve high print quality and high print rate

摘要

A drop-on-demand ink jet has an ink chamber coupled to a source of ink, and an ink drop orifice with an outlet. An acoustic driver produces a pressure wave in the ink and causes the ink to pass outwardly through the ink drop orifice and outlet. The driver is driven with bipolar drive pulses having a refill pulse component and an eject pulse component of a polarity which is opposite to the refull pulse component. The refill and eject pulse components are separated by a wait period. The drive pulses may be adjusted to minimize their energy content at a frequency corresponding to the dominant acoustic resonance frequency of the ink jet. This will accelerate drop breakoff, optimize drop shape and minimize drop speed variations over the range of drop printing rates. The ink jet printer of the present invention may be used to print with a wide variety of inks, including phase change inks to achieve high print quality at high print rates.