How Does a Solid Ink Printer Work?
Normally ink is thought of as a liquid. However, there is a printing technology that utilizes solid ink, also called phase change ink or hot melt ink. The names are often used interchangeably, but the term solid ink will be used in this description of the technology. The concept of solid ink is that it is solid at normal ambient temperatures but in the ink-jet printing device, the ink is melted, converting it into a liquid that can be jetted much as any other liquid ink is handled in a piezoelectrically driven ink-jet printer (but not, of course, in a thermally driven bubble-jet printer). The real advantage of solid ink over aqueous ink is that the molten ink does not have to dry. Instead, it freezes (solidifies) almost instantaneously on the cool printing surface. This also means that solid ink does not dry out in the nozzles of the ink-jet, as aqueous inks are prone to do. In addition, solid ink does not wick into the paper as liquid inks do. It remains bound to the surface of the pa
