Inkjet Technology Explained

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Summary

Inkjet printers are favoured mostly by home users, photographers and the graphics industry. Although quite expensive to run, inkjets are unrivalled for photo realistic printing. For day to day use it may be worth considering a laser printer as the quality for other types of document will at least be on a par but with much lower running costs however, the initial purchase price needs to be considered for the total cost of ownership.

How it works

An inkjet printer is a printer that places incredibly small dots of ink onto a page. By incredibly small, we are talking smaller in diameter than a human hair! An Inkjet printer is capable of placing dots extremely accurately, with resolutions in excess of 1440 x 720 dots per inch. By using combinations of the four colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black photo quality images can be created. Some manufacturers have taken this a step further and added additional colours (Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Light Yellow etc.)

There are two ways of putting ink onto the page, bubble or bubble jet and piezoelectric. Bubble or bubble jet uses heat and the latter uses a crystal and an electric charge to fire the ink from the cartridge onto the page. Some inkjet printers employ a process called dye-sublimation. The ink is contained in cartridges, heated to extreme temperature, vaporized, and laid down a line at time rather a page at a time. If you look at an inkjet in action, you will see the printhead moving across the page.

There are also 2 distinct types of ink, pigment based and dye based. Both are comprised of either a dye or pigment dissolved in a solvent. When the ink hits the page the solvent dissolves leaving behind the dye or pigment. Dye based ink is water soluble, and so if the print gets wet, the ink dissolves. Pigment based inks are more water resistant and embed themselves in the fibres of the paper. Pigment based inks tend to use larger droplets, and are more fade-resistant.

Media is also a key factor in the quality of the print from an inkjet, there is a significant difference between printing onto standard media and photo media for example. You can even print directly onto CD's with some inkjets!