Inkjet printers place tiny droplets of ink on paper via nozzles, using either thermal bubble or piezoelectric methods. Bubblejet printers have 300-600 nozzles, while piezo printers have smaller droplets for better image quality. Inkjet printers are affordable but cartridges can be costly for heavy printing.
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 tiny droplets of ink on the paper. Inkjet printers are considered a non-impact type of printer, as opposed to dot matrix, as the ink is transferred to the paper via nozzles. These nozzles spray ink directly onto the paper.
There are two different methods that inkjet printers often employ: the thermal bubble and the piezoelectric. The former gives the type of bubble jet printer its name and handles things very differently from the piezoelectric method.
With thermal bubble, or bubblejet, resistors create heat, which then creates a bubble in the ink. The bubble expands and pushes the ink out of the nozzle. Eventually, it will collapse, drawing more ink into the cartridge. On average, a bubble jet printer will have a range of three hundred to six hundred nozzles.
Piezoelectric uses small crystals in nozzles that will vibrate under the influence of an electric current; this in turn pushes the ink out and draws more ink into the cartridge. The ink droplets exiting the piezo-type printer are significantly smaller than those of bubblejet printers, allowing for greater control over image quality. This method is patented by Epson, which explains its lower market penetration; the thermal bubble method is used by most printer manufacturers.
These printers were first mass-produced in the 1980s, but it took until the 1990s for the price to drop to a point where the average consumer would notice. Since then, inkjet printers have been used in the home, office and even in the commercial printing environment.
The low cost and relatively high quality of the prints offered by the inkjet printer are suitable for most everyday tasks; unfortunately, if you do a large amount of printing, the price of the cartridges could drive you home and away! Well, maybe not that bad, but keep in mind that if you do a lot of heavy printing, the ink cartridges can’t hold that much ink and you could end up buying many times the cost of your printer in ink.
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