Whether you are reading this whilst sat at home or in the office, the chances are that there is an inkjet printer near to where you are right now. Inkjet printers have been around since the second half of the 1980s and since that time have increased significantly in popularity and performance whilst decreasing in price all the time.
An inkjet printer is defined as one which creates images by placing minute droplets of ink onto the paper. These dots are between 50 and 60 microns in diameter which is smaller than the width of a human hair (70 microns). These dots are positioned precisely with resolutions up to 1440x720 dots per inch possible.
There are several types of printer technology available. Impact printers have a mechanism which touches the paper in order to print the image. These come in 2 forms: dot matrix printers which make use of a series of small pins which transfer the ink to the paper and character based printing which are basically computerized typewriters. These consist of a ball or series of bars with letters and numbers embossed on the surface. This surface is then struck against an ink ribbon in order to transfer the character s image to the paper. Inkjet printers are non impact printers and can also come in LaserJet printers which use dry ink, static electricity and heat in order to place and bond ink to the paper.
Solid in printers contain ink that comes in a form similar to sticks of wax. These are melted then applied to the paper before the ink hardens into plae. Dye sublimation printers make use of a long transparent roll of film which resembles sheets of cellophane coloured in red, blue, yellow and grey all stuck together end to end. Solid dyes are embedded in this film, which correspond to the 4 basic colours used in printing. The printer head then uses a heating element which varies in temperature depending on the amount of colour to be printed. The colour dyes vaporise and permeate the paper before turning to solid form.
The internal workings of an inkjet printer consist of the print head assembly which contains the print head itself, ink cartridges, print head stepper motor, the belt which attaches the print head to the motor and the stabilizer bar which ensures that the movement is smooth, precise and controlled. The paper feed assembly simply consists of the paper tray, rollers and the paper feed stepper motor which supply paper into the printer.
There is only a small amount of circuitry which is build into the printer however it needs to be fairly sophisticated in order to control all the mechanical aspects of the operation. Interface ports allow the printer to be connected to the computer. Some computers still make use of the parallel port however it is now commonplace for most printers to use the USB port.
The first printers to be available were large, bulky affairs however advances in technology have meant that they are much smaller, sleeker and cheaper than the printers of yesteryear.
Author Resource:-
Dave Matthews is writing on behalf of Ink Technologies (UK) Ltd (http://www.itlgb.com), specialist retailers of inkjet cartridges.
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