You may be wondering how your inkjet printer actually works. How does the ink get from the cartridge onto the paper? Why is the print quality so sharp and clear?

Here we have the answers!

The inkjet printer was first introduced in the late 1980’s, and has since grown massively in popularity and performance, whilst dropping significantly in price.

Firstly, there are five main components to your inkjet printer. These are the print head, paper feeder, circuit board, power supply and the outer casing. The most important in this case being the print head. The print head contains an array of nozzles which force millions of microscopic dots of ink out of multiple holes onto the paper in a highly controlled and systematic fashion.

Ink cartridges come in all sorts of shapes and sizes depending on the manufacturer and model of the printer. Some printers only require two cartridges, one black and one colour, where as others will need an individual cartridge for each colour. In some cheaper printers, the print head is not part of the printer, but part of the ink cartridge. There are two main types of print head; these are piezoelectric and thermal, which is commonly known as ‘bubble jet’.

Well known inkjet manufacturers such as Canon and Hewlett Packard use the thermal print heads in their cartridges. In a thermal inkjet printer, the print head still acts as the management space; however each microscopic dot on the print head has a tiny heated filament. When a dot of ink needs to be placed on the paper, a current of electricity is passed through the filament to boil the ink in the nozzle and create a steam bubble. When the bubble collapses, ink is then shot out of the nozzle. This will pull more ink into the print head from the cartridge. An average thermal print head has 300 to 600 tiny nozzles, and all of these can fire an ink droplet simultaneously.

The other type of print head available uses the piezoelectric technology, which uses a special piezo crystal which vibrates when electrified. This is commonly used by well known printer manufacturer Epson. In Epson printers, the print head can be found fastened inside the printer, this means the print head will never need to be replaced. This has kept the price of Epson ink cartridges low as they are little more than reservoirs of ink. In a piezoelectric printer, a crystal is located at the back of the ink reservoir of each nozzle. The crystal will receive a small electric charge that will cause it to vibrate. When the crystal vibrates it causes a controlled quantity of ink to be forced onto the paper. When the electrical current is off, the crystal bends back to its original shape which creates a vacuum, therefore drawing more ink into the nozzle from the reservoir.

Inkjet printers today are cheaper than ever and twice as fast as their predecessors. Printers will of course continue to improve over time as the demand for printing remains high.