Utilization of piezoelectric stiffened effects on impact printer heads

Abstract

AbstractThe electromagnetic printer head has traditionally been used in the impact dot‐matrix printer based on the electromagnetic attractions. The traditional technique, however, is approaching its limit. To find a break‐through for this limit, efforts have been made to develop a printer head based on the piezoelectric effect. So far, however, there has not been realized a piezoelectric printer head with a better performance than that of the electromagnetic printer head. This paper discusses the direction to be aimed at by the high‐performance printer head based on the piezoelectric effect. The reported direction can be summarized as the use of the longitudinal stiffened piezoelectric effect, instead of the transversal piezoelectric effect considered in the past, as well as the use of the lever mechanism which is isolated structurally from the piezoelectric element, instead of the traditional bimorph structure. The first piezoelectric printer head for some commercial printer products has already been successfully fabricated based on the essential idea in this paper, indicating its practical usefulness.