How an Inkjet Printer Works
Inkjet printers are a common type of printer used by most persons in the home, or in places of business, but many people aren’t completely aware of how these printers actually work. The first thing to know about inkjet printers is that they apply the ink directly to the paper with a series of nozzles and sprayers, in order to release ink onto the paper, a small crystal in the ink cartridges is energetically exited which causes it to vibrate (similar to the technology in Liquid Crystal Display televisions). The vibration causes ink to be released from the cartridge in incredibly small dots (just microns in diameter) that make up the picture.
The quality of the printer can be determined by the dpi, which is an acronym for dots per inch. This number was relatively low when printers were first released, but now the dpi can be in the hundreds of thousands. This dpi is measured by its dimension, such as 720×1080, which would be read as 720 dots by 1080 dots, for a total of 777,600 dots in a single square inch.
When you press the print button from your computer, the electrical signals that are sent to the printer are translated by the computer into the frequency that each crystal must be excited to. As the ink is dispersed the head of the printer can shift back and forth to move where the ink is being applied on the paper, and the roller moves the paper through the entire printer.
When it comes to the actual ink there are two options that can decide the color of the dot, the resolution can be used to make single color dots look like other colors, or the actual ink can be mixed in a color bay, or directly on the paper.
To learn more about how an inkjet printer works, please check out this video on Youtube.