MAINTENANCE APPARATUS HAVING ROTATABLE PRINTHEAD WIPER WITH SCRAPER
A maintenance apparatus for a printhead, the apparatus having: a porous member for rotatably contacting the printhead to absorb particulates from the printhead; and a scraper for contacting the porous member to remove the absorbed particulates from the porous member during the rotation.
1 . A maintenance apparatus for a printhead, the apparatus comprising:
a porous member for rotatably contacting the printhead to absorb particulates from the printhead; and
a scraper for contacting the porous member to remove the absorbed particulates from the porous member during said rotation.
2 . An apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the printhead is a media width printhead, and the porous member and the scraper are elongate with a longitudinal length of at least the media width.
3 . An apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the porous member is rotatably mounted to a wiper module supported by a sled and the scraper is removably mounted to the wiper module.
4 . An apparatus according to claim 3 , wherein the scraper is clipped to the wiper module.
5 . An apparatus according to claim 3 , wherein the scraper is mounted to the wiper module so that the scraper contacts the porous member on a vertical circumferential region of the porous member below the upper circumferential region of the porous member which contacts the printhead.
6 . An apparatus according to claim 5 , wherein the scraper is disposed at a sloped angle relative to the porous member such that the sloped scraper contacts the porous member at a tangent to the circumference of the porous member.
7 . An apparatus according to claim 3 , wherein the wiper module comprises compressible core mounted to a rotatable shaft, the porous member being provided over the core.
8 . An apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the porous member is formed of non-woven microfiber.
9 . An apparatus according to claim 8 , wherein the non-woven microfiber is wrapped about the core by a spiralling technique so that at least two layers of the microfiber are present about the core with an adhesive between the layers.
10 . An apparatus according to claim 7 , further comprising a hydrophobic film is disposed between the core and the porous material.
11 . An apparatus according to claim 10 , wherein the film is formed of a pressure sensitive adhesive.
12 . An apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the scraper is mounted to the wiper module so that contact pressure is exerted on the compressible core.
13 . An apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the scraper is resiliently flexible.
14 . An apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the scraper is a resiliently flexible sheet of Mylar.