Inkjet Printer Basics

By Author: Ethan Luke
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With the wide assortment of inkjet printers on the market, knowing a little more about how inkjet printers work can help you decide which will work best for your printing needs. Inkjet printers can range from small, inexpensive machines to large professional machines. The major difference between the various types of ink jet printers lies in the method the printer deposits ink on the print media. This article will explain the different types of inkjet printers and the printing capacity for which they are best suited. There are three types of inkjet printers popular in the marketplace: Thermal, Piezoelectric,and continuous.

Thermal Inkjet Printers

Thermal inkjet printers are the least expensive, and the most widely sold and distributed type of inkjet printers. If you are looking at buying a Canon, Hewlett-Packard, or Lexmark printer, chances are you are looking at a thermal inkjet printer. Thermal inkjet printers are not the same as thermal printers, which heat thermal paper to produce images. To eject ink from the ink cartridge of a thermal inkjet printer, a current is passed through heating elements, which ...
... heats the ink. The heating of the ink causes rapid vaporization in the ink chamber causing increased pressure, which squeezes a drop of ink out on print media. Most inks are water-based, but contain volatile components to produce the vaporization pressure. This type of printer is best for home or small office use.

Piezoelectric Inkjet Printers

Piezoelectric crystals, the trademark of piezoelectric inkjets patented by Epson, print with better precision and quality compared to thermal inkjet printers. Piezoelectric printers are mostly used for commercial and industrial use and are the preferred printer for printing high resolution pictures. The piezoelectric crystals are located in the back of an ink reservoir attached to a nozzle. When an electric current passes through the crystal, it causes the crystal to vibrate inward allowing for ink to be deposited. The crystal then vibrates outward to replace the previously deposited ink. More ink varieties are available with a piezoelectric ink jet printer since the ink does not have to contain a volatile compound for the printer to function.

Continuous Inkjet Printers

Continuous printers do just as their name suggests and produce a continuous flow of ink. They are sometimes called drop on demand printers. Used commercially for the marking and coding of products and packages, this type of printer in only cost-effective for large-scale printing. Continuous printers are capable of producing large amounts of photographic quality images at extremely high speeds. Continuous printers work by forcing droplets of ink onto print media, through nozzles. The print image created is determined by the print driver software, that controls which nozzles shoot droplets, and when, at speeds of 5,000 droplets a second.

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