Patent ID: 7413295

Claim:
An inkjet printer comprising: a recording head operable to eject an ink onto a recording medium so as to perform a recording operation on the recording medium; an ink source unit provided to store the ink that is to be supplied to said recording head; and an ink delivery unit provided to delivery the ink supplied from said ink source unit, to said recording head, wherein said ink delivery unit has a delivery chamber which has a delivery chamber inlet and a delivery chamber outlet, such that the ink can be delivered through said delivery chamber inlet from said ink source unit, and such that the ink can be delivered through said delivery chamber outlet toward said recording head, wherein said delivery chamber is defined by mutually opposed walls that are held in substantially parallel with a horizontal plane, and is a flat chamber elongated in a direction parallel with said mutually opposed walls, wherein said delivery chamber inlet and outlet of said delivery chamber are positioned in respective positions which are substantially diagonal relative to each other, wherein said ink delivery unit includes a damper unit defining at least a part of an ink delivery channel through which the ink is to be delivered from said ink source unit to said recording head, so as to damp pressure fluctuation in the ink delivered through said ink delivery channel, wherein said damper unit has a damper chamber as said delivery chamber which has a damper chamber inlet as said delivery chamber inlet and a damper chamber outlet as said delivery chamber outlet, wherein one of said mutually opposed walls of said damper chamber is provided by a flexible film that is deformable by the pressure fluctuation in the ink, so as to serve as a damper wall, wherein said damper unit has a guide rib which projects from other of said mutually opposed walls toward said one of said mutually opposed walls that is provided by said flexible film such that said rib has a distal end that is spaced apart from said flexible film, and wherein said guide rib extends away from said damper chamber inlet toward said damper chamber outlet, without any portion of said guide rib intersecting an ink path along which the ink is to flow from said damper chamber inlet toward said damper chamber outlet.