Popular Products > Computers > InkJet Printers

Inkjet printers have become the preferred printing solution for the majority of consumers these days. An inkjet printer is easy to use, produces high quality output at a relatively low cost, and is equally suitable for both black and white and colour printing.

The basic operating mechanism of an inkjet printer involves propelling variable-sized droplets of ink onto paper. Currently, inkjet printers use one of the following three methods of printing:

thermal, piezoelectric or continuous. The print cartridge of a thermal inkjet printer has a heating element. When electricity passes through this heating element, a steam explosion takes place inside, forming a bubble and propelling ink droplets onto the paper.

Most inkjet printers, however, use piezoelectric technology. In such a printer, behind every nozzle is an ink-filled chamber with a piezoelectric material in it. This material changes shape or size once voltage is applied to it, creating pressure in the chamber. This pressure squeezes ink droplets from the nozzle. In continuous inkjet printers, a high pressure pump is used to throw ink from a reservoir as a continuous stream of droplets. Almost all desktop inkjet printers use aqueous inks, which are a mixture of water, glycol and certain dyes and pigments. This ink is easy and inexpensive to produce, but not that easy to control once it drops onto the surface of the paper.

Inkjet printers use either a fixed-head print head or a disposable head. The fixed-head design is used in high-end industrial inkjet printers. In this design, a single built-in print head is used, which is called a Gaither Head. This head lasts for the entire lifetime of the printer. The big disadvantage is that if the fixed head gets damaged, the user has to replace the printer.

Alternatively, a disposable print head is supplied with a replaceable ink cartridge. So every time a user replaces the exhausted cartridge, the print head, too, is replaced with a new one.

Inkjet printers provide a number of advantages. They operate very quietly compared to both daisywheel and dot matrix printers. Since inkjet printers provide high resolution prints, they are great for printing fine details and even prints of a photographic quality. Inkjet printers require negligible warm up time and operate at a lower cost per page compared to most other printers.

Finally, it’s easy to change or refill the cartridges of an inkjet printer. Overall, an inkjet printer provides an efficient and cost effective printing solution.