How Do InkJet Printers Work

Since their introduction in the late 1980s, printers using inkjet technology have gained popularity while increasing in performance and decreasing in price. Due to their inexpensive price, great output quality, ability to print in vivid color, and user-friendliness, they are the most prevalent form of computer printer for the average customer. Each printer using inkjet technology deposits incredibly tiny droplets of ink onto the paper to produce text or a picture. Currently, inkjet printers dominate the market for home and small-business computers. Inkjet printers are often affordable, quiet, and generally quick, and many versions are capable of producing high-quality output. As with the most of contemporary technology, the current inkjet is based on the development of several older models. Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Canon may claim a major portion of the credit for the invention of current inkjet technology, among many other contributions.

Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, and Lexmark account for the vast bulk of inkjet printer sales on the global consumer market. Typical inkjet printers consist of an inkjet printhead assembly, a paper feed assembly, a power supply, control circuitry, and interface ports. The inkjet printhead assembly is composed of many components. One of these components is the printhead, which is the heart of the inkjet printer and features a series of nozzles used to spray ink droplets. Another component of the printhead is the inkjet cartridge or tank. Depending on the printer brand and model, ink cartridges are available in a variety of configurations, including separate black and color cartridges, color and black in a single cartridge, and individual cartridges for each color. Some inkjet printer cartridges incorporate the print head itself. By employing a stepper motor and a specific belt, the printhead and inkjet cartridge(s) are pushed back and forth across the paper.

Some printers incorporate an extra stepper motor to park the print head assembly while the printer is not in use, preventing unintended movement of the print head assembly. The print head assembly employs a stabilizer bar to provide accurate and controlled movement. The paper tray or paper feeder is a component of the paper feed assembly. The majority of inkjet printers include a tray for loading paper. Typically, the feeder opens at an angle on the rear of the printer, enabling paper to be inserted. Feeders often store less paper than ordinary paper trays. A series of rollers draw the paper from the tray or feeder and advance it when the print head assembly is ready for another pass. A step motor then drives the rollers to move the paper in the precise increment required to guarantee a continuous picture is created.

While previous printers often used an external transformer, the majority of printers available now include an internal power source. A tiny but sophisticated amount of electronics is included inside the printer to regulate all mechanical elements of operation and decode data provided from the computer. It is cable-connected to the computer through the interface connector. The interface port may be either parallel, USB, or SCSI. Many printers still utilize the parallel connector, however the vast majority of modern printers use the USB port. A few printers connect through serial port or SCSI port. There are several sorts of inkjet printers dependent on how they distribute the ink droplets. There are now three predominant inkjet technologies used by printer manufacturers. The thermal bubble technique used by Canon and Hewlett-Packard is often known as bubble jet. Tiny resistors in a thermal inkjet printer generate heat, which vaporizes ink to form a bubble.

As the bubble grows, ink is forced through a nozzle and onto the paper. When the bubble bursts, a vacuum results. This draws additional ink from the cartridge into the print head. Each of the 300 or 600 small nozzles on a standard bubble jet print head may shoot a droplet simultaneously. Consumer inkjet printers nearly solely use thermal inkjet technology. The ink used is either water-based, pigment-based, or dye-based, although the print head is typically manufactured at a lower price than with other ink jet technologies. Epson's piezoelectric technology, in contrast to bubble jet technology, employs piezo crystals. At the rear of the ink reservoir of each nozzle lies a crystal. A minute electric charge is applied to the crystal, causing it to vibrate. When the crystal vibrates inwards, it pushes a little quantity of ink through the nozzle. When it vibrates out, it draws more ink into the reservoir to replace the ink that was sprayed.

Commercially, the continuous inkjet process is utilized for labeling and labelling items and packaging. William Thomson filed the first patent for the concept in 1867. The first commercial model was released by Siemens in 1951. A high-pressure pump feeds liquid ink from a reservoir through a small nozzle to create a continuous spray of ink droplets in continuous inkjet technology. The liquid stream breaks into droplets at regular intervals due to a piezoelectric crystal. As the ink droplets develop, they are exposed to an electric field generated by a charging electrode. Depending on the required degree of drop deflection, the field is altered. This produces a varied, regulated electrostatic charge on each droplet. To decrease electrostatic repulsion between surrounding droplets, charged droplets are separated by one or more uncharged "guard droplets." The charged droplets are then guided (deflected) by electrostatic deflection plates to the receptor material to be printed, or are permitted to proceed unaffected to a collecting gutter for reuse.

Continuous inkjet is one of the oldest and most established inkjet technologies now in use. The very high velocity (50 m/s) of the ink droplets is one of its benefits, since it enables them to be hurled a great distance to the target. Another benefit is the absence of nozzle blockage, since the jet is continually in operation. When printing is initiated, the software program transmits the data to be printed to the printer driver, which converts the data into a format the printer can comprehend and verifies that the printer is online and ready to print. The data is transmitted from the computer to the printer through the connection interface via the driver. The computer transmits data to the printer. A fixed quantity of data is stored in a buffer. Depending on the printer type, the buffer may vary from 512 KB random access memory (RAM) to 16 MB RAM. Buffers are advantageous because they enable the computer to complete the printing process without waiting for the actual page to print. If the inkjet printer has been inactive for a while, it will often run a brief cleaning cycle to ensure the print heads are clean. After the cleaning procedure has concluded, the inkjet printer is prepared to print. The control circuitry operates the stepper motor for the paper feed.

This engages the rollers that feed paper from the tray or feeder into the printer. When there is paper in the tray or feeder, a little trigger mechanism in the tray or feeder is compressed. If the trigger is not pushed, the inkjet printer alerts the computer by illuminating the "Out of Paper" LED and sending a message. Once the paper has been fed into the inkjet printer and positioned at the beginning of the page, the print head stepper motor utilizes the belt to drive the print head assembly across the page. Each time the print head splatters droplets of ink onto the paper, the motor stops for a fraction of a second and then advances a short distance before pausing again. This stepping occurs so rapidly that it seems continuous. There are many dots at each station. It sprays exact quantities of the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) colors to create any color possible. The paper feed stepper motor advances the paper by a fraction of an inch at the conclusion of each full pass. Depending on the type of the inkjet printer, the print head is either reset to the first side of the page or, in most instances, simply reverses direction and continues to travel back across the page as it prints. This procedure is repeated until the page has been printed. The time required to print a page might vary significantly across printers. It will also vary dependent on the page's intricacy and the size of any pictures. The print heads are parked after printing is complete. The finished page is pushed into the output tray by the paper feed stepper motor's rollers.

The majority of modern inkjet printers use inkjet inks that are very quick-drying, allowing the sheet to be picked up quickly without smearing. Inkjet printers offer a variety of benefits over older consumer-oriented printers. They operate more quietly than impact dot matrix and daisywheel printers. Through greater printhead resolution, they can print finer, smoother details, and there are several inkjet printers with photorealistic color printing. In contrast to more costly technologies such as thermal wax, dye sublimation, and laser printers, inkjet printers have almost no warm-up time and a reduced cost per page (except when compared to laser printers).

The downsides of inkjet printers include print heads that are susceptible to clogging and costly inkjet cartridges. Consequently, value-conscious buyers often select laser printers for medium- to high-volume printing applications. Other downsides include ink leakage, which occurs when ink is moved laterally away from the intended place due to the capillary action, resulting in a muddy look on some kinds of paper. The majority of the best laser printers reviews manufacturers also offer special paper coated with clay to prevent bleeding. Because the ink used in the majority of inkjet cartridges and ink tanks is water-soluble, inkjet-printed papers must be protected against even the tiniest amount of moisture, which may cause significant "blurring" or "running."

There is a market for professional inkjet printers, some of which are for page-width format printing and the majority for wide format printing. Page-width format refers to a range of print widths between 8.5" and 37" Wide format refers to inkjet printers with print widths ranging from 24 inches to 15 feet. Page-width inkjet printers are used for printing high-volume commercial communications that need less attention-grabbing layout and color. Invoicing, tagging, and personalized catalogs and newspapers rely heavily on page-width inkjet printers, especially with the use of changeable data technology. The majority of wide format inkjet printers are used for printing advertising images; printing designs by architects and engineers is a secondary use.

Source: Printer Central