Claims
- 1. In an ink pen adapted for use in a off-axis printer having a remote ink supply, where the ink pen includes a local ink supply and a print head adapted to selectively print using ink from the local ink supply, an improvement comprising:a valve that selectively supplies the local ink supply with ink from the remote ink supply; wherein said valve includes a fluid inlet adapted to receive ink from the remote ink supply, a fluid chamber having a valve seat and a valve head, and a fluid outlet adapted to feed ink into the local ink supply from the fluid chamber; wherein said fluid chamber is bounded by a compliant diaphragm, said valve being prefabricated to receive a magnetic actuator having two reciprocal actuator elements that operatively couple to the compliant diaphragm to displace the compliant diaphragm in a reciprocal manner upon selective actuation of the magnetic actuator, said compliant diaphragm coupled to one of the valve seat and the valve head to perform one of selective opening and selective closing of the valve in response to actuation of the magnetic actuator, such that volume of the fluid chamber is kept substantially constant notwithstanding actuation of the actuator and opening or closing of the valve.
- 2. An improvement according to claim 1 wherein the magnetic actuator is an electric relay.
- 3. An improvement according to claim 1 wherein the magnetic actuator is an unencapsulated electric relay.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/287,507 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,354 filed on Apr. 7, 1999, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein.
US Referenced Citations (3)
Number |
Name |
Date |
Kind |
4460905 |
Thomas |
Jul 1984 |
A |
5980028 |
Seccombe |
Nov 1999 |
A |
6325354 |
Hoen et al. |
Dec 2001 |
B1 |
Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
09/287507 |
Apr 1999 |
US |
Child |
09/930098 |
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US |