Actuating Voltage Waveform Optimization of Piezoelectric Inkjet Printhead for Suppression of Residual Vibrations

After a piezoelectric inkjet printhead jets the first droplet, the actuating membrane still vibrates, creating residual vibrations in the ink channel, which can degrade the inkjet printhead performance. For suppressing these vibrations, an optimized actuating voltage waveform with two pulses must be obtained, of which the first pulse is used for jetting and the second pulse is used to suppress the residual vibrations. In this study, the pressure history within the ink channel of a recirculating piezoelectric inkjet printhead was first acquired using lumped element modeling. Then, for suppressing residual vibrations, a bipolar voltage waveform was optimized via analysis of the tuning time ([Formula: see text] ), dwell time ([Formula: see text]), rising time ([Formula: see text]), falling time ([Formula: see text]), and voltage amplitude of the second pulse. Two voltage waveforms, Waveform 01 and Waveform 02, were optimized thereafter. In Waveform 01, [Formula: see text] , and [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] were finalized as the optimal parameters; in the case of another waveform, the optimal parameters of [Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] , and [Formula: see text] were found to be [Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] , and [Formula: see text] , respectively. The optimal voltage amplitude of the second pulse was found to be 1/3 the amplitude of the first pulse. On the basis of our analysis, the tuning time in Waveform 01 is the most sensitive parameter, and the performance yielded is even poorer than that yielded by standard waveform, if not optimized. Therefore, the other waveform is recommended for the suppression of residual vibrations.