At 12:34 PM 2/27/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>I am looking into driving a small inkjet print head.
>I have found a Japanese Seiko site that shows assembly level print heads
>offered, but their English sites show only thermal printheads.
>
>Does anyone have a source for inkjet heads that can be intgrated into a PIC
>controlled design?

Inkjet heads are typically either thermal (HP, Cannon, etc.) or piezo (Epson).

The thermal ones typically have the print head built into the ink cartridge and
if I remember correctly it takes about 20V to heat the element up. If you
are not
using printer ink, you will probably have to change the voltage. Supplier would
be any store selling the ink cartridges.

The piezo heads I've seen were in the $100 (US) range. It would probably be
cheaper to buy a printer and strip the piezo head out of it. I think those
use 40 V and PWM to push their ink through it. Some suppliers are:
www.piezo.com  - for just the piezo elements
http://www.inkjet-tech.com/index.shtml  - for a piezo print head
Try searching for piezo printhead.

If you do a patent search for the type of printer and ink cartridges that you
want to use, the patent will probably tell you the voltage and drop size
produced.

Good luck
_____________________________________________________________
Cris Wilson
Information Resource Consultant
College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities
Clemson University
cris@clemson.edu
To report problems email: aah_computers@clemson.edu

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