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This is the first part of our Comprehensive inkjet printer Buyers guide with detailed information for people who are looking forward to buy an Inkjet Printer, and want to learn about the type of Inkjet Printers that can be found on the market.

In this section you can:                                         

Find tips on how to buy a consumer Inkjet printer.  

Receive free guidances on Photo Inkjet Printers.                                

Discover the benefits of Portable Inkjet Printers.

Learn everything about Multifunction Inkjet Printers.

Get useful information about On-Disk Inkjet Printers.

See the Pros and Cons of Inkjet Printers!

                                   Technology of the Inkjet Printers.

 Consumer Inkjet printers are the pros of printers for color printing, but when the quality color photo printing was called the photo inkjet printers are your best choice. For the home, office, or for your small business, inkjet printers will fit the bill perfectly.

As I recall, a few years ago Inkjet Printers were slow and capable of producing only black & white prints. But the advent of modern printing technology is changing this.

These new innovative technologies and improvements had helped Inkjet printers to become the dominant printers on home desktops. Higher quality output, affordability and increased efficiency are driving inkjet printer sales. Therefore Inkjet Printer manufacturers are continually updating their machines and have made significant advances in the quality of their printers. This is being driven by an evolution in printing technology that is changing the way we print, allowing more accuracy and vibrant colors in printouts

Over the recent years color reproduction, printing speed, resolution and ink drying time have improved to the point where Inkjet Printing became a preferred alternative both for personal, and business printing applications too.

Todays Inkjet printers are able to deliver superb text and present the increased ability to produce even complex graphics with bright and saturated colors.

Therefore, Inkjet printers are the most popular and affordable type of printing devices from the printers family. The generally desktop-sized Inkjet Printers are very useful tools with home users, students, small offices and digital camera owners, as they are fast, quiet and produce excellent print quality.

How inkjet printers work?

Inkjet printers use a series of nozzles (thousands of tiny holes on the cartridge) to spray various colors of fast-drying liquid (the size of only a few picolitre of) ink drops directly on the paper (or other media) to draw an image or the text. This builds the image, row-by-row, inch-by-inch.

The amount of ink drawn on the page is decided by the printers driver software that commands which nozzles shoot droplets, and when.

While impact and thermal technologies require the print head to actually contact the page surface in order to print, inkjet printing, just like laser printing is a non-impact process.

Inkjet printers never contact with the surface of the printed media.

There are two types of inkjet technology on the market: thermal/bubble jet and piezo.

The thermal inkjets or bubble jets are the most popular technology for disposable inkjet print heads. The nozzles, drilled in the print head, use a heating element (ring heater) to create a vapor bubble.

As ink heats, a bubble forms and expands in the channel, which forces a droplet of ink onto the paper. And the vacuum draws in more ink to fill the empty space. Although this process comes with the advantage that heated ink dries faster on the paper, it requires a finite amount of time to cool after firing.

If there is not enough time to cool, ink might dry out and clog inside the channel. The required cooling time is a main reason for the slower firing rates. (1000 dots per second).

With Piezo printers, the nozzles and the channel construction are very similar to thermal inkjet heads, but the ring heaters are replaced with a patented piezo-electric printing head (piezo crystal), located behind each nozzle. This piezoelectric ceramic ring vibrates when a high-energy electrical signal is applied, which causes it to constrict the channel. Basically the piezo-crystal translates the electrical impulses into pressurized ink that are rapidly laid onto the paper. After the electrical pulse passes, the ceramic returns to its original shape, allowing the ink to fill up the empty space. Micro piezo technology results in precise ink droplets, allowing the printer to place them extremely accurately without sacrificing printing speed.

Printers with piezoelectric pumps can fire at rates approaching 5000 dots per second.

Types of inkjet printing process:

Inkjet printers use one of two approaches to spray ink onto the media.

The most common is Drop on Demand, where by applying electrical signals to the walls of the chambers, a distortion is caused that bows the walls outwards, generating pressure on the ink chamber and the drops are shot one by one onto paper or other media through tiny nozzles. The drop on demand technique requires an individual command for every dot that is ejected from the inkjet print head. 

Drop on Demand= drops are shot one by one!

The second type is known as Continuous inkjet. With this process the printer sprays continuous stream of ink droplets onto the printer paper by applying pressure. The high pressure is used to form drops, which are electro-statically deflected, and only those droplets that are not deflected are deposited on the media, allowing droplets to be generated at high speed. By timing the start and the duration of each ink stream very precisely, it is possible to achieve exceptionally fine detail and high resolution with printouts.

The Continuous inkjet lets you print also onto rough, bumpy or soft surfaces from any direction.

Continuous inkjet= continuous stream of ink droplets!

While a piezo inkjet printer may use one of the drop-on demand or continuous flow systems, thermal-inkjet printers employ only drop-on-demand systems with water-based inks.

Next Page:                                                                                                       

Learn about key aspects in a Photo Inkjet Printer.     

Related article: How laser printers work?

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