Maintaining equipment for ink-jet printer

Abstract

An inkjet printer driving a maintenance apparatus using a power to a feed roller. In the inkjet printer, the maintenance of the maintenance apparatus is started by a carriage. The maintenance apparatus includes a maintenance member which cleans and covers the nozzle of a print head, a maintenance cam which controls the maintenance member through a rotating motion, a maintenance gear which is disposed at one end of the maintenance cam and has a cut off portion in which a part of gear teeth is partially cut off in a face width direction, and a connection gear disposed on a shaft of the feed roller to be able to move in a shaft direction by the carriage and transmit the power of the feed roller. During the printing operation of the carriage, the connection gear is placed on the cut off portion, and then engaged with the teeth of the maintenance gear disposed adjacent to the cut off portion by the pushing of the carriage. The connection gear is supported in the shaft direction of the feed roller by a return spring, and the return spring returns the connection gear to place the connection gear on the cut off portion of the maintenance gear when the connection gear is not forced by the carriage.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to maintenance equipment used in inkjet printers to keep nozzles of print heads in good condition by vertical movement, and more particularly to maintenance operations for inkjet printers in which maintenance operations are initiated by carriage and driven by paper feed rollers equipment. Background technique [0002] A general inkjet printer is a printing device that prints images by ejecting ink stored in a printhead through nozzles. Since the nozzle surface of the print head is often polluted by ejected ink during printing, it is necessary to regularly clean the ink on the nozzle surface to obtain good printing quality. Also, when the nozzles are exposed to the air and do not print for a long time, the dried ink can clog the nozzles. Therefore, various maintenance devices have been developed to cover the nozzles to avoid the above-mentioned problems. [0003] figure 1 Typical maintenance equipment for inkjet printer...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0008] However, such conventional maintenance equipment for inkjet printers requires a separate motor to drive the maintenance equipment, which increases manufacturing costs

In addition, the size of the inkjet printer increases or its internal space becomes smaller because a separate motor requires more space

Also, using a separate motor increases the weight of the inkjet printer, and since the top cover cannot be secured to the carriage, the top cover and nozzles can become misaligned if the printer is subjected to a shock

Images