Personalized Invitations & Stationery; Inkjet Printing

Even though inkjet printers have been available since the 1980s, it was not until the late 90s that the prices dropped low enough for this technology to be brought into the public market. Canon claims that it invented the ‘Bubble Jet’ technology in the late 70s, when a scientist accidentally touched a hot soldering iron to an ink-filled syringe. The heat from the iron forced a droplet of ink out of the syringe and thus, a new printing technique evolved. Since inkjets were invented, color printing has increased in popularity.

Inkjet printing has made rapid technological progress in recent years. Research in inkjet technology has resulted in improvement in usability, performance and output quality with every new product that has been launched into the market. As this process of sophistication continues, the prices of inkjet printers are expected to continue to drop. Essentially, inkjet printers have been more popular than laser printers because of their capacity to produce color. However, ever since the 1990s, when color laser printers became more feasible for home users, this advantage became less definitive. Nevertheless, in the following years, inkjets developed the ability to produce photographic quality prints, which has gone a long way in regaining their advantage in the realm of color printing.

The only shortcoming is that, even though inkjets are a lot cheaper than lasers, they are far more expensive to maintain. The cartridges have to be changed regularly, and the special coated paper, which is what produces that high-quality output, is expensive. If you compare the cost per page, inkjet printers turn out to be at least ten times more expensive than lasers.

How does Inkjet Printing work?

Just like laser printing, inkjet printing is also a non-impact method. Ink is generally released from the nozzles as they pass over a large variety of media. Visualizing the operation of any inkjet printer can be quite easy: Various colors of liquid ink are squirted on the sheet of paper, to create a specified image. A print head scans the paper in horizontal strips by using a motor assembly to make sure it moves from left to right and then back, while another motor assembly rolls the page in vertical steps. First, a tiny strip of the image is printed, then the paper moves on, and the next strip is printed. To speed up the process, the print head does not print only a single row of pixels with each pass, but a vertical row of pixels each time.

Modern inkjet printers can print in black and white, and color, but the manner in which they switch from one mode to another varies from model to model. The number of inks present in the machine determines the output. Printers that are equipped with the CMYK mode (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black) are capable of switching from black and white text to color images on the same page with ease. Printers that have the RGB mode (Red, Green, Blue) are not capable of doing this.

Most of the cheaper models of inkjet printers have space for only one ink cartridge. So, every time that you want to change the cartridges from black and white to color, you must swap the cartridges physically. When black is used on a color page, it consists of three basic colors that may result in an unappealing gray or dark green color, which is known as composite black. However, this composite black that is produced by the latest inkjet printers is of much better quality, because of the constant advances in the quality of ink.

The ink used in inkjet printers is water-based, and this can be problematic. Some of the early inkjets were prone to running and smudging, but over the years there have been considerable improvements in this area. Paper pre-conditioning has gone a long way in improving the inkjet output quality on plain paper, by preparing it to receive ink with the help of an agent that binds the pigment to the paper. This reduces smearing and dot grains. A lot of effort has been put into achieving these results. If these advances have the desired effect, one of the biggest obstacles to the extensive use of inkjet printers will have been eliminated.

Articles

Articles

– Raised Ink Printing (Thermography Printing)	– Flat Ink Printing
– Embossing & Debossing Printing	– Foil Stamping Printing
– 4 Color Offset Printing	– Offset Lithographic Printing
– Digital Printing	– Digital Duplicator Printing
– Laser Printing	– Inkjet Printing
– Thermal Printing	– Screen Printing
– Engraving Printing	– Printing Resolution Revealed

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