The invention includes processes and products made by the processes. The processes include making forms and parts by friable mold casting or die casting using molten Nitinol poured or injected into the mold or die. After the Nitinol has cooled to a solid state, it is removed from the mold by disintegrating the friable material of the mold and is heated to an elevated temperature under high pressure to consolidate the Nitinol and remove any internal voids. The parts and forms are then heat treated to reduce brittleness and improve toughness and impact strength. The part may be hot machined to reduce it to near net size, and may be ground to reduce the part to the exact specified part size. For example, cylindrical parts can be centerless ground; balls can be ground in a conventional ball grinder; flat stock can be surface ground. For parts requiring a smooth surface finish, polishing or lapping provides the specified surface finish on the part, down to 0.5 microinch RMS or finer. The part may be heat treated to obtain the desired hardness, from RC40 to RC65. An integral surface oxide of any of several colors can be formed on the surface of the part. The oxide surface may itself be polished to an even finer surface finish. Shape memory effect may be obtained in Type 60 Nitinol parts and forms that have been hot-worked by heat treating to about 675.degree. C.-700.degree. C. and oven cooling slowly over 8-10 hours to ambient temperature.

A micromechanical system can include a substrate, an actuator, and an actuated element. In particular, the actuator can include a serpentine arrangement of alternating actuating and opposing segments anchored at a first end thereof to the substrate wherein the actuating segments deflect in response to actuation thereof so that a second end of the serpentine arrangement moves relative to the substrate upon deflection of the actuating segments. The actuated element is attached to the second end of the serpentine arrangement so that the actuated element moves relative to the substrate upon deflection of the actuating segments. Related methods and actuators are also discussed.

An inkjet printhead is formed on a substrate incorporating drive circuitry for the nozzles of the printhead formed by a CMOS process. One or more of the layers formed by the CMOS process are utilized as a sacrificial material layer in forming the actuators or paddles of the ink ejection nozzles formed by MEMS process.

This patent describes an ink jet printer including a thermal actuator including a heater element encased within a material having a high coefficient of thermal expansion whereby the actuator operates by electrical heating the heater. The heater element has a corrugated structure so as to improve the thermal transfer to the actuation material so as to thereby increase the speed of actuation of the thermal actuator. The heater element is also of a serpentine or concertinaed form so as to allow substantially unhindered expansion of the actuation material. The thermal actuator can include layers sandwiched together where the conductor material has a series of slots or holes so as to allow the actuation material to be integrally joined together so as to reduce the likelihood of delamination of the layers.

An object of the present invention is to provide a thin and light-weight actuator module structure comprising a multi-layer structure such as a bimorph or unimorph structure that can be formed in an arbitrary shape and deformed in an arbitrary direction, which is high in safety and durability and can be easily fabricated, as well as a method of manufacturing the same.An actuator has a structure such that a striped internal stress distribution is induced within a plane of a bending type actuator of a laminate structure, thereby allowing the actuator to bend so as to constitute a part of a cylindrical shape whose central axis is parallel to the striped direction.