Ink jet technologies - also known as microdrop technologies - are receiving increased interest in applications outside of traditional printing and marking. Because of this, methods and procedures are necessary to evaluate components and fluids of designs for non-printing applications. Much attention has been spent on drop on demand (DOD) printing due to its large commercial availability, which has caused continuous ink jet (CIJ) printing to be neglected. This issue is addressed by developing procedures to photograph droplets produced by a CIJ printer in the absence of charging and deflection. Both an OEM printer and a custom experimental setup are used to supply fluid pressure and modulation voltage to a CIJ modulator and nozzle. The resultant droplets are photographed with two different camera systems, and analyzed with Matlab and ImageJ. With these programs, methods are presented to analyze the velocity, volume, drop production rate, and spacing of the droplets so that these factors can be evaluated in the design of a new system that uses CIJ technology.
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