Effect of Ink Drop Coalescence on Print Quality in Solid Ink Printing

摘要

In ink jet printing, coalescence of separately deposited drops can occur on some media surfaces. These drops will move towards one another or combine into larger drops. The coalescence of these drops can degrade the print quality. Coalescence has been described with a 3-parameter model by fitting the parameters to microscopic measurement of the drop motion. In this work, we incorporate this 3-parameter model into a solid ink printer simulation and examine the impact of coalescence on print quality. We find that coalescence causes "pairing" of the pixel columns in the cross-process direction (perpendicular to direction of paper travel) and line breaks in the process direction. For streaks that are caused by the interlacing process, coalescence also further degrades the streaking appearance. We will provide possible physical explanations to drop coalescence and how it can be minimized resulting in improved print quality.