1. Technical Field
The entire disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No.: 2013-039456, filed Feb. 28, 2013 is expressly incorporated by reference herein.
The present invention relates to a technique that is related to cartridges for storing a liquid.
2. Related Art
There is a conventionally known technique of employing an ink cartridge for storing ink (also simply called a “cartridge”) as a technique for supplying ink to a printer, which is one example of a liquid ejection device. This cartridge includes a liquid storage portion for storing ink serving as the liquid, and a liquid supply portion for supplying the ink in the liquid storage portion to a printer.
There is also known to be a cartridge that includes a circuit substrate for exchanging information with a printer (e.g., see JP-A-2008-074100). This circuit substrate stores information regarding the cartridge, such as information indicating the manufacturing date of the cartridge and the color of stored ink. When the cartridge is mounted to the cartridge mounting portion of the printer, terminals of the circuit substrate come into contact with conductive contact members arranged on the cartridge mounting portion. The circuit substrate and the printer are thus electrically connected, making it possible for various types of information to be exchanged between the circuit substrate and the printer.
When the cartridge is in the mounted state, it is subjected to various external forces. One example of an external force is force that the conductive contact members exert on the cartridge (biasing force). Another example of an external force is the force exerted on the cartridge when the printer performs a printing operation or the like. If the printer is of the type in which the cartridge mounting portion is installed on the carriage that is provided with the head (i.e., the “on-carriage type”), another example of an external force is the force exerted on the cartridge due to the cartridge moving along the main scanning direction of the carriage (inertial force).
When the cartridge is subjected to various external forces, the state of contact between the contact members and the terminals becomes unstable, and there are cases where the electrical connection between the cartridge and the printer cannot be maintained in a favorable state.
In the technique described in JP-A-2008-074100, a positioning portion is provided on the bottom plane of the cartridge in order to suppress positional shift caused by force applied to the cartridge by the conductive contact members. The positioning portion of the cartridge is shaped as a projection, and engaging it with a positioning portion provided on the cartridge mounting portion suppresses positional shift of the cartridge caused by force applied by the contact members.
However, with the technique described in JP-A-2008-074100, there have been cases where it is difficult to suppress positional shift of the terminals provided on the cartridge relative to the contact members caused by external force applied to the cartridge. For example, there have been cases where the reliability of contact between the contact members and the terminals decreases due to the terminals and the positioning portions being arranged at separated positions. In this way, in technology that employs cartridges provided with terminals, there is desire for a technique for raising the reliability of contact between the terminals provided on the cartridge and the contact members provided in the printer. Also, with cartridges provided with terminals, with liquid ejection devices, and with systems that include a cartridge and a liquid ejection device, there is desire for size reduction, cost reduction, resource saving, structure simplification, improvement in usability, lifetime extension, improvement in safety during use, and the like.