How do inkjet printers work?
Given the advances that technology has been making over the last thirty years or so it is amazing that the Inkjet printer is just now becoming a “ho-hum” sort of item. The inkjet printer has been around since the early 1980’s but needed a few fine tuning advances to make it more affordable to the average user. Since that time in the 1990’s, when the advances necessary for mass marketing were found, inkjet cartridges have become the norm. But the question of how inkjet printers actually work, and is it a good thing remains. Of course the answers to these questions are yes, no and maybe. Two choices The basic concept behind the inkjet printer lies in the concepts of how printers work. Right at the “ya…so” level we find an answer of; a printer puts printer ink onto a piece of paper or other material. In our case we are talking about getting ink from ink cartridges onto paper in a finely defined color. Thermal bubble – This first choice came largely from the bubble jet era and works by g
This document is intended to introduce you to the basic operation of how inkjet printers, and in particular Epson desktop inkjet printers work! Before you begin, please be aware that much of what we say here is just our understanding of how things work – this information has not been provided by Epson or any representative of Epson. We recommend you read it for information only, and in the light of our views on ‘understanding the way things work’ covered here. We’ll be adding some pretty pictures soon to make this text a bit more interesting. Let’s begin: Basic Systems The way we see it, there are three key systems operating in any inkjet printer: The ink system that starts with the ink in a cartridge, and ends up getting it onto the paper; The system that moves the print-head across the page and seals it at the ‘home’ position (horizontal positioning); The system that feeds the paper through the printer (vertical positioning). They are each interrelated. But let’s take a look at each
One of the most popular and affordable printers available today is the inkjet printer. But how exactly do these common printers work? At the most basic level, what the printer does is place small drops of ink onto the paper. Inkjet printers are considered a type of non impact printer, as opposed to dot matrix, since the ink is transfered to the paper by way of nozzles. These nozzles spray the ink directly onto the paper. There are two different methods that inkjet printers often employ: the thermal bubble and the piezoelectric. The first lends its name to the bubblejet type of printer, and handles things quite differently from the piezoelectric method. With the thermal bubble, or bubblejet, resistors create heat, which then creates a bubble in the ink. The bubble expands and forces ink out from the nozzle. Eventually, it will collapse, drawing more ink into the cartridge. On average, a bubblejet printer will have a range of three hundred to six hundred nozzles. The piezoelectric utiliz
Given the advances that technology has been making over the last thirty years or so it is amazing that the Inkjet printer is just now becoming a ho-hum sort of item. The inkjet printer has been around since the early 1980s but needed a few fine tuning advances to make it more affordable to the average user. Since that time in the 1990s, when the advances necessary for mass marketing were found, inkjet cartridges have become the norm. But the question of how inkjet printers actually work, and is it a good thing remains. Of course the answers to these questions are yes, no and maybe. Two choices The basic concept behind the inkjet printer lies in the concepts of how printers work. Right at the yasolevel we find an answer of; a printer puts printer ink onto a piece of paper or other material. In our case we are talking about getting ink from ink cartridges onto paper in a finely defined color. Thermal bubble This first choice came largely from the bubble jet era and works by generating a
