Ink Cartridges - A Humble Beginning

computers and their accompanying printers were huge years ago. In the past toner reservoirs and toner cartridges were used instead of ink cartridges like those used now. It was difficult to fill a toner cartridge and it was very messy.

Toner cartridges were an improvement. Print wheels and ribbons were used in some printers. computers are now more compact and the printers do more than just print in some cases. Printer cartridges now have self-contained reservoirs. Refilling some printer cartridges now is not as messy as adding toner was.

Printer cartridges are available in two types. Primarily Hewlett-Packard and Epson printers used the first type the Piezo Electric. An applied electric current is put to a small crystal causing it to expand approximately every five microseconds (20,000 per second).

The inkjet ink squirts out through the print heads very fast and very precisely because of this expansion. Because Piezo Electric has fewer print heads than bubble jet/thermal printers it can do more precise action and tends to last longer. Bubble jet cartridges heats the ink rapidly into a bubble and then squirts it through ink nozzles thousands of times per second.

Bubble jet printers are less noisy than the Piezo based printers. You can expect really high resolution color printing from it. Inkjet has ink squirted through the nozzles as they move over a variety of media, not mega pixel method. Various colored liquid ink is squirted at the paper to create an image. The page gets scanned by the print head horizontally by a motor assembly that rolls the paper vertically.

A strip of an image is printed and the paper moves toward the next step. It not only prints a strip across the page it also prints vertical rows of pixels in each pass for speed. There are a number of types of inkjet technology. Ink in small drops are squirted onto the paper through tiny nozzles in drop on demand (DOD).

It resembles turning a hose off and on 5,000 times a second. How much ink is dropped on the page and which nozzle fires and when is controlled by the driver software program. The ink may smudge after printing is one problem with inkjet technology. With the development of new ink compositions, this is progressing.

Ink is discharged onto the paper in the Thermal Technology of printing. This process has three stages. In stage one the squirt begins when the ink is heated to create a bubble. When the pressure is initiated the bubble breaks and

The resulting vacuum draws out the ink from the reservoir to replace what was ejected. Printers used to be costly because the print heads that would imprint the image on the paper was within the printer. Printers are cheap now but the expense comes when you need to buy cartridges.

You could almost conclude it would almost be worth it to buy a new printer instead of the cartridges because the price of the cartridges can be more than the cost of the most basic inkjet printers.

Though the current price of cartridges is expensive the complex technology they contain will end up being cheaper in the long run than it would be to continually replace printer heads.

Now print heads are contained within the cartridges themselves. It's exciting because if you use the correct cartridges for your printer you could have it for a very long time. Color cartridges work the same way as black cartridges by squirting the ink through tiny nozzles onto the paper in horizontal strips while they move across the page.

There are three individual reservoirs in color cartridges, one is filled with cyan, the other with magenta, and the other with yellow ink. The quality of the image can be influenced by a lot of things. The quality of the paper can affect the image you get. The image you get can be affected by both brightness and absorption of the ink.

Brightness indicates the vividness of the print image and absorption is how effectively the paper absorbs the ink. When using an inkjet printer, it is best to use paper specifically designed for its use. The best possible image can be possible with the use of the proper paper.

Things that can affect your printing project are display properties settings and/or printer settings. You may want to leave your documents alone to dry for awhile depending on the paper you use and your printer. Most printers have an ink saver setting that puts out less ink which will allow documents to dry faster. You should have knowledge of how your printer operates.

About the Author
Martin Smith is a successful freelance writer providing advice for consumers on purchasin