Inkjet printer how it works

That demure inkjet in your work desk really conceals some red-hot physics.

By John A. Burek

A typical inkjet gets control info from your printer driver/PC, or may process the printout in its onboard electronic devices. Regardless, rollers advance a web page from your paper tray (1) under a sliding printhead/cartridge set up (2). Then, the printhead stepper engine (3) kicks in, attracting the set up on a sliding rod (4) to its starting position, often via a belt (5).

The printhead (6) right is an unbelievable bit of miniaturization, in some instances fabricated via an etching process similar to semiconductor manufacture. On some printers, the top and ink cartridge (7) tend to be one unit. The top's microscopic nozzles (8)—anywhere from dozens to virtually thousands—are outlets for extremely small ink chambers (9), which are fed because of the cartridge's reservoirs. Microscopic droplets (10), assessed in millionths of a millionth of a liter (no, that's not a typo), fire through nozzles.

But just how? Pumps just don't come that small. Instead, many inkjets (Epsons excepted) use "thermal" technology by which a little resistor (11) in an ink chamber is pulsed, as required, with intense existing, superheating the ink and vaporizing area of the droplet. The result: great stress blasts it out the nozzle and on your page. (Epson employs a piezoelectric procedure in which using present to a crystal in an ink chamber causes it to oscillate, ejecting the ink.) Capillary action after that draws brand new ink to the chamber. Your text and pictures are made up, line by line, as printhead set up songs throughout the page.

Confirmed chamber can duplicate the heating/firing/cooling pattern lots and lots of times per second. Start thinking about that, and all sorts of of an abrupt $40 for the ink cartridge doesn't seem very so incredibly bad.