Printer Ink and Toner
Although
inkjet printers only appeared on the consumer market in the
late 1980s, they had been under development for more than
twenty years by that time. In the mid-1970s, printer
companies realized the potential of the technology that
would make dot matrix printers obsolete. The challenge,
however, was to come up with a way to create an affordable
inkjet printer that would reliably create high-quality
printouts. |
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Inkjet Printer Technical
challenges
The quality of the printed
page depends largely on the relationship between the ink,
the print head, and the paper. Researchers had a hard time
creating a controlled flow of ink from the print head onto
the page, and preventing the print head from becoming
clogged with dried ink. Once these challenges were met by
Canon and Hewlett Packard in the late 1980s, liquid inkjet
printers began to come on the market
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Inkjet Printer Different
styles
Continuous inkjet printers
were developed by IBM, and use electrically-charged droplets
to coat the page with ink very quickly but also waste a lot
of ink. This technology never caught on with consumers, but
is used today in industrial settings, for labeling cartons
and addressing direct mail. The more popular design among
consumers is the drop-on-demand inkjet printer, invented by
Siemens in 1977. These printers, which spray ink only where
needed, are slower than continuous inkjet printers but less
expensive. Most drop-on-demand printers, including those
made by HP, Canon, and Lexmark, use thermal technology to
push the drops of ink out of the print head; Epson uses its
own technology, called piezo-electric, to achieve the same
effect. The inkjet printer has come a long way since it
became available almost twenty years ago: Hewlett Packard's
DeskJet printer, which was among the first available to the
public, was priced at $1,000 in 1988! |
