Development of New Multi-Purpose Heating Head

Abstract

We developed a new multi-purpose heating head. It resembles the traditional thermal printhead which has the resistive heating element on the ceramic substrate. Some differences are that it has a continuous resistive element while the printhead has an array of individual independent resistive element heating dots. Consequently, the methods to energize two devices are different. The most significant difference is that it has the heating element on the back side of the ceramic substrate and the media contact is on the front side of the substrate. This unique structure solves many problems which have been difficult and costly to deal with in the traditional structure. Heating element abrasion is no longer a problem as the media is not in contact with the heating element side. The heating element protective over-coating layer is not needed. Other benefits are the even temperature distribution throughout the heating head and easiness of manipulating the heating characteristics of the heating element. A family of heating heads using this idea has been made from small to large format. The new concept product is suitable for thermal rewritable printer erase head, thermal re-transfer printer heating head, pre/post-printing process of printing media and electrophotographic printer toner fuser.