Inkjet Printing 101

By the 1970s, printers that are capable of printing out the images from a desktop computer have already been developed and have started to gain popularity. These are called the inkjet printers, which are in use even until today, having undergone many improvements and changes since. Inkjet printers are not used as much by commercial printers in commercial printing, who usually specialize in offset printing, and they are more commonly used in normal households and office. Still, for those who wish to learn more about this type of printing, here are some facts about inkjet printing. As mentioned above, inkjet printers are a type of computer printers. In concept, what these printers do is to print out documents and images by propelling the ink directly onto a print medium, usually paper. There are several technologies when talking about inkjet printing. Namely, these are the continuous inkjet printing (CIJ), thermal drop-on-demand, and the piezoelectric drop-on-demand. Continuous inkjet printing makes use of high-pressure pumps, piezoelectric crystals, and electrostatic fields in order to eject and control the path of the droplets of ink. Primarily, CIJ is used for marking different products. Thermal drop-on-demand, on the other hand, uses a heating element and pressure in order for the ink to be propelled onto the print medium. Lastly, piezoelectric drop-on-demand, as its name implies, makes use of piezoelectric materials as opposed to thermal drop-on-demand’s heating elements. Not going into full detail about the functionality of an inkjet printer and all of the different processes which constitute the overall printing process, let us move on to a less technical description of the advantages and the disadvantages of inkjet printers. For starters, the operation of inkjet printers is quieter than that of impact dot matrix printers as well as daisywheel printers. They are also less expensive in terms of cost per page and have no real need for any warm-up time when compared to other printing technologies. As for disadvantages, inkjet prints have a greater tendency to fade over the years as well as to blur because of the solubility of the ink in water. And speaking of the ink, it can be very expensive to buy. Added functionality within the printer can also lead to false errors in printing and ink level detection, which at the worst case can lead to a printer refusing to print using a cartridge. Finally, the nozzles of the printer can be prone to clogging. Now, these disadvantages have been addressed to a certain extent, solving most if not all of these concerns. Inkjet printing is just one of the many printing technologies that are accessible to the world nowadays. This technology is a very important advancement which, in some way, contributed to modern printing, along with commercial printers and commercial printing today. While the trend nowadays is slowly going towards laser printing, advanced digital printing, and 3d printing, it cannot be denied that inkjet printing has been an important step towards the current printing capability of the whole world.