Abstract: An ink jet printhead having off center or offset heaters or thermal transducers to reduce heater damage. The printhead has heaters located beneath channels to eject ink from the channel through a nozzle to a substrate for printing. Edge heaters are spaced away from the dicing edges of the heater plate to avoid damage resulting from dicing for assembly or from thermal expansion due to adjacent printheads if used to form a page width or large array printhead. The spacing distance between the edge heaters to adjacent equally spaced heaters on the same printhead is less than the distance between adjacent equally spaced heaters. Edge heaters are also offset from the centerline of respective channels in the printhead.