What is a inkjet printer?

The inkjet printer, a printer head has nozzles that place the ink on the printer. Inkjet uses liquid ink to spray characters on to the page. Non-impact printers do not strike any ribbon or paper to pro duce the image. Instead, they use ink spraying, elec trostatic magnetization or heat process to produce the required image.

As the inkjet printers do not use any ribbon and the ink is directly released to the paper, the image looks much smoother than the image generate using a dot-matrix impact printer.

PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION OF INKJET PRINTER

In the inkjet printing mechanism, the print head has several tiny nozzles, also called jets. As the moves past the print head, the nozzles paper spray the ink onto it, forming the characters and images. An inkjet printer can produce from 100 to several hundred pages, depending on the nature of the hard copy, before the ink cartridges must be replaced.

There is usually one black ink cartridge and one so-called color cartridge containing ink in primary pigments (cyan, magenta and yellow). Some inkjet printers use a single cartridge with cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. A few models require separate cartridges for each primary pigment, along with a black ink cartridge.

An inkjet printer works in the following manner:

1. An ink-filled print cartridge attached to the print head moves sideways across the width of a sheet of paper. This sheet of paper is fed through the printer below the print head.

2. The print head is made up of small ink-filled chambers, each attached to a nozzle thinner than a human hair.

3. An electrical pulse flows through a heating element, i.e., thin resistors located at the back of the ink chambers.

4. When electric current flows through the resistor, the resistor heats a thin layer of ink at the bottom of the chamber to more than 900′ Fahrenheit for a short duration. This makes the ink boil and forms a small bubble of vapor.

5. At this vapor bubble expands, it pushes ink through the nozzle to form a droplet at the tip of the nozzle.

6. When the bubble further expands, the ink droplet overcomes the surface tension and the pressure of the bubble forces the droplet onto the paper forming a small dot.

7. A typical character is formed by a number of these tiny dots.

8. As the resistor cools, the bubble collapses and pulls fresh ink from the attached reservoir into the ink chamber.

9. For color printing, multiple cartridges of three basic colors cyan, magenta and yellow are used. In addition, by mixing different colors on the paper, Inkjet printers can provide millions of colors.

10. Most of the good quality Inkjet printers provide one additional black cartridge other than the three basic color cartridges. This black cartridge is used to print black text or other black color images. Mixing of the three basic colors to produce black gives a faded black color.

Various Components of the Inkjet Printer

An inkjet printer is made up of several parts that accept, support and move the paper during the process of printing. All these parts work in coordination so that the printer works properly. If any of these components get spoilt, the printing process will get held up.

The various inkjet parts categorized into two main groups: These are:

(a) The Print Head Assembly

(b) The Paper Feed Assembly

The parts that fall into the print head assembly category are as follows:

1. The Print Head Assembly

Print Head

The first and most obvious part is the print head itself. The print head is the soul of any inkjet printer. It is made up of several nozzles whose purpose is to spray small droplets of ink onto the paper. Without this component, the inkjet printer would be completely useless.

Cartridge

-The second most important part in this category is the ink cartridge. A cartridge contains ink for printing. The type of ink cartridge will differ depending on which manufacturer you buy from. chase ink cartridges that come with individual cartridges for black ink and colored inks or with a single cartridge for both kinds of ink. You can even purchase an individual ink cartridge for every different color. There are some ink cartridges available for inkjet printers that come built-in with the print head.

Printer Head Stepper Motor

An inkjet printer comes built in with a stepper motor. The function of the stepper motor is to move the print head assembly, which consists of the ink cartridges and print head, forward and backward from corner to corner of the page.

Belt

The belt is another part of the print head assembly. It is used to attach the print head assembly to the stepper motor.

Stabilizer Bar

The print head assembly also makes use of a stabilizer bar. The function of the stabilizer bar is to make sure that the printing process goes through with precision, control and accuracy.

2. The Paper Feed Assembly

Paper Tray/Feeder

The main part in this category is the paper tray/feeder. Almost all models of inkjet printers consist of a tray into which you can load the paper. Others make use of a feeder in place of a tray. The feeder accepts the paper and forwards individual sheets as printing progresses. It pulls open at an angle and is placed at the back of the printer. However, there is a disadvantage with paper feeders. They cannot hold as much paper as a normal paper tray.

Roller

A roller pulls the page from the paper tray or paper feeder and sends it into the printer once the print head system is all set to print.

Power supply

While earlier printers often had an external transformer, most new printers use standard power supply that is incorporated into the printer itself.

Control circuitry

It is a tiny, but significant, piece of circuitry that is built into the printer. The main function of this circuitry is to oversee and manage the mechanical phases of the printing process. The other function it has is to decode all information given by the computer to the printer for any print jobs.

Interface port

The last component is actually a group of devices combined and put under one category, which are called the Interface Ports. The parallel port is still used by many printers. The newest range in Interface Ports amongst printer owners is the USB ports.

 

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