Talk:Inkjet printing

This entire article deals with on-demand inkjet printers only. We need to include content on the continuous inkjet printers like Iris printers, the ones used to produce the giclées.

-- Tooki 07:41, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Usage in ATMs and Cash Registers

I'm not a huge contributer to Wikipedia so I didn't want to make this edit myself. However, in the "General" heading under this article, it is stated that Inkjet printers find common usage in ATMs and Cash Registers. On the contrary, these devices do not use inkjet printers, but a technology that incorporates thermal paper. The print head is similar to a daisy wheel setup which is heated and "burns" the information onto special paper. You can verify this fact by comparing the feel of most receipts you get, they are slightly smoother and more plastic. You can then hold a heat source (such as a lighter flame) underneath them and they will quickly turn black in response.

--Pianist.envy 02:12, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I will likely change this tonight. Mscudder 00:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

History: the HP ThinkJet

How about a bit more on the history, in particular the HP ThinkJet that started the "revolution" away from dot matrix printers once users of microcomputers got their hands on the parallel and serial interface versions? The original ThinkJet had the HPIB (IEEE-488) interface, and was used primarily with test and monitoring equipment.

Print "quality" of the ThinkJet was about as good as draft mode on a 9 pin dot matrix, but the small size (not much wider than a sheet of paper) and lack of noise made it very desirable for low noise environments like hospital rooms.

Canon has used both disposable head and seperate ink tanks and replaceable head technology, sometimes in the same printer where either a high capacity black cartridge with integrated printhead or a replaceable printhead with one tricolor and one black ink tank could be used. Some early Canon inkjets used a fixed head with a hose leading to a very large, black ink tank. (Fixed tanks with hoses to the printheads have been used off and on throughout the history of inkjets.)

Xerox had a short foray into inkjet printers in the early 21st century, marketing a series of low cost printers and multifunction machines with mechanicals made by Sharp. Xerox designed their own outer casings and even customized the firmware to have any instance of "Sharp" replaced with "Xerox". They were decent printers but the advertised 1200DPI printing was only available in Windows 98 and Me. Windows 2000 drivers are available to download but they and the severely limited drivers included with Windows XP limit printing to a maximum of 600DPI. The Xerox inkjets have a bad reliability problem where the color printhead quits printing one of the three colors. (Three out of three for me, one each failing on cyan, magenta and yellow. See also many postings on Usenet.) Otherwise they have good print quality and the ink tanks are very easy to refill by carefully pushing a curved syringe needle through the outlet, past the soft foam.

Epson printers have had a bit of a checkered history with reliability, specifically a tendency for the fixed printheads to clog if the printer wasn't used on a regular basis. Some people have always used Epsons and never had a single head clog, some have gone through several Epsons and had clogs on every one. Epson has also tried to block refilling of their ink tanks through use of microchips.

Hewlett Packard has very recently introduced inkjets that use seperate ink tanks and printheads, some with individual tanks for each color. An older line of HP's used four tanks with integrated printheads and had MIO slots for network interfaces and slots for large amounts of RAM as well as the Adobe PostScript printer control language.

Better explaination required?

I think a small drawing of how the print head works woulnd't do any harm. In fact it would be nice.
i dont think it not sufficet

Yeah I agree. There's a lot of excellent work done here; on inkjet printers in general, the specifics of Thermal and Piezoelectric Inkjets, on the inks themselves and on the design and trade offs of the printing heads. I didn't know it was so complicated but so far it's been written extremely well (just enough detail, clear, doesn't make too many assumptions about previous knowledge). However an image would be extremely useful to put it all into context. Of particular interest to most people would be a diagram of the standard disposable inkjet head. Well done to the all the constructive contributors so far! 62.49.4.186 (talk) 14:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Article organization

Being an engineer in the ink jet industry, I'd like to organize this article a bit better, and add information about industrial uses of ink jet. (Much of the information is in the article already, but its organization leaves a bit to be desired.) I'd like to end up with several articles about ink jet in general, ink jet for personal use, ink jet for commercial use, and ink jet for industrial use.

I'm going to start with the Technology section, and create a small page for industrial ink jet applications, specifically material deposition.

Jaeger10 21:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Continuous Ink Jet

The Swedish scientist Prof. Carl Hellmuth Hertz of the University of Lund in Sweden is also named as the inventor of the continous inkjet technology. Is there any sources for the claim from Stanford? Source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE1D7173AF93BA25756C0A9669C8B63

References to my edits: Tech Quarterly: Spitting image, The Economist. London: Sep 21, 2002.Vol.364, Iss. 8291; pg. 24 and http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/19/1/4 and "Digital Spin, Green with Envy", John C. Dvorak, Forbes; January 22, 2001

Dye sublimation

I'm a little confused, because in the section on the types of ink, sublimation dyes are mentioned as a type of inkjet. But then in the discussion on advantages, it mentions dye-sublimation printers as a different thing entirely. Or is this a different type of sublimation than the one mentioned in the inks section? I had added the dye sublimation link, but now I'm second guessing it. --W0lfie 18:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Piezo vs. fixed

Why is "piezo" used parenthetically as if it were a synonym of "fixed"? It seems a little misleading/confusing. If I'm missing something, please let me know. Also, 8 companies are listed as using them. Is that really "very few" as stated earlier in the same sentence? --W0lfie 18:21, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because the companies that use piezo (principally Epson) are also the companies that use a fixed (semipermanantly mounted) print head rather than an in-ink-cartridge print head. But if it's not clear to you, this is Wikipedia so please feel free to be bold and make it better!

Atlant 18:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Atlant, for your ever-present encouragement. It sounds like this might be a jargon issue. If I find a good solution, I'll put it in. --W0lfie 17:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Piezo heads are usually "fixed", because piezo heads are too expensive to treat as disposable with an ink cartridge. Conversely, fixed heads are usually piezo, because piezo heads have better long-term reliability and faster firing rates. -- DavidHopwood 18:39, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Commercial Links

I don't understand why the link to http://www.cheap-ink-now.com got removed, its a site full with resources and articles about ink jet printing. please explain —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.143.139.113 (talk • contribs).

It seems to be a pruely commercial site which adds no new value to the article. --Pmkpmk 18:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Continuous Stream Ink Jet History

The first letter quality continuous stream ink jet printer, the IBM 46/40 Document Printer was developed by IBM and announced in 1977. A good reference on the technology behind this printer can be found in the IBM Journal of research and development Vol 21, No. 1, 1977. This journal references a patent 3576275 (1971) by R. G. Sweet entitled "Fluid Droplet Recorder". Jetpilot77 20:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you edit along these lines, please be careful. Teletype Corporation sold a continuous stream inkjet printer (their "Inktronic" line) before IBM [1], but I don't know if anyone would claim the Teletype model was "letter quality".

Atlant 17:12, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your point is well taken. I should have checked my facts. I checked the IBM site and they describe the IBM 46/40 Document Printer as being "correspondence quality" and that it was announced in 1976. Most letters in this time frame were typed on a typewriter. "Correspondence quality" was supposed to be equivalent to a typewriter with a fabric ribbon as opposed to a film ribbon. The printer was mono only, 240 dots per inch. It printed at 7.7 in/sec which gives 77 characters per second at 10 pitch or 92 characters per second at 12 pitch. Jetpilot77 14:55, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Objectivity of this article is extremely questionable

The objectivity of this article is extremely questionable. Sections of this article are bordering on advertising for third party ink manufacturers. The article contains three images showing third party ink solutions which hold no relevance to the subject of "inkjet" technology or to the text they are situated next to.

Recommend sections of this article be re-written and/or deleted. Certainly the third party ink images need to be deleted. Any discussion of third party ink should be directed to a page for 3rd party ink solutions. --Zaphod6502 (talk) 00:43, 2 July 2008 (UTC)NOt[reply]

Not just that. There seems to be a lot of name dropping in general. I scratched out the constant Epson name dropping, (and do the major manufacturers need to be listed in the introduction, twice?) but someone needs to take a closer look at the article and see just how deeply embedded it is. klosterdev (talk) 19:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see a citation as well for "ease of use" being a reason for claimed and uncited ink jet popularity. Personally I find my laserjet much easier to use than the inkjet that I have as well. It is also faster and quieter, and probably cheaper too coz inkjets guzzle up a lot of ink, so I'm having a bit of a hard time accepting inkjets are really that popular... --80.223.57.250 (talk) 06:07, 27 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh...I come back and the name dropping is back. Epson Epson Canon Epson HP Canon Epson klosterdev (talk) 07:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cost of ink, memjet technology, popularity, advantages, disadvantages

I see some problems with this article.

First off, no mention of MemJet technology (from Silverbrook), which they claim is supposed to be on the market in 2009.

Inkjets are OBVIOUSLY by far the most common printer for household users due to their cheap cost (average low-end cost is between $100 and $150 for a color inkjet all-in-one, or $60-$100 for a plain color printer; average cost for a basic black and white laser is $150-$200, basic color laser $300-$400, color all-in-one $500+). As a retail worker, we sell maybe three or four laser machines per week and anywhere from 25-60 inkjets per week, at just our store.

Inkjets also have higher resolution for printing (average inkjet resolution 4800x1200, average laser resolution 600x600 or 1/16th average inkjet; high-end consumer resolution i.e. canon pixma mp830, mx850 9600x2400 average color laser quality under $800 1200x600). Go to the store (take an SD card with you that has a really good photo with lots of different colors, good contrast - lights and darks, and some areas with gentle shading). Pretend you are interested in buying a high quality photo printer and have them put their highest grade photo paper into their highest quality machines in both categories - laser (probably will be an HP AIO) and an inkjet (probably will be an MP8xx series or MX8xx series, make sure it has 9600x2400dpi). Have your photo printed on both machines (8.5x11 paper, of course) at the highest quality and compare them side by side.

I see lots of name-dropping, but only one instance of Brother. Why? They're a large seller.

Also, nothing on Dell printers being made by Lexmark.

Or, nothing about lexmark printers being rated consistently last among their competitors (in overall brand ratings, not specific models) and canons usually being rated first (followed by HP). See PC World Magazine's 2008 ratings, they actually have readers rate instead of editors.

The section on disposable heads, nothing about most all-in-one photo printers having a four, five, or six cartridge system with disposable head, or about all epsons using this system, or no lexmarks (that I know of) using this system, or all kodak's using this system. No mention either of the common ink colors (black, cyan, magenta, yellow, with either a second dye-based black or a light cyan/light magenta combo being common options).

Now to the disadvantages. As far as ink being very expensive, total BS. The numbers about "cost per liter" and "cost per gallon" are useless, because you can get 40 pages per ml of ink (sure, you could buy a gallon of ink with a continuous feed ink system and print 100,000 pages, and it might not cost that much, but who would seriously do that?). I see no mention on here about price depending on the specific cartridge (for example, some HP color ink cartridges can be $20 for 3.5ml of ink, while the HP 88XL Black is usually about $35-$38 for 60ml of ink). In fact, HP's OfficeJet Pro series can has about a 1.5 cent per page cost black (estimated 2,450 pages at $38 retail price). Let's compare to the Brother TN-115 series toner (the high capacity color laser toner for sub-$1000 brother color lasers). The black cartridge prints off 5,000 pages for $93 MSRP - a cost per page of 1.86 cents. Neither of those includes the drum or print head having to be replaced.

As far as lifetime, that largely depends on the paper. Go to the store and look at the back of HP photo paper; you'll see different grades of photo paper, each of which have a different life compared to lab photos (usually listed as longer).

The overall expense section needs redone or removed. It uses biased speech (is costly, expensive replacement, much lower capacity). These are all opinions, not facts, and are generalized.

Also nothing in here about cartridge capacities and yields (only canon currently lists ink amounts in ml on all cartridges, hp is switching to listing page yield and no ml on cartridges, epson brother and lexmark do not have any yield or capacity info on the cartridges, and kodak just lists number of photos - making it impossible to make cost comparisons between manufacturers. Page yield is subjective, only accurate way of comparing cartridge cost is via ml of ink. out of the four that don't list on the cartridges, I know for a fact Kodak doesn't list their cartridge capacity in ml anywhere).

Also, inkjet machines have more features. Average inkjet machine around $200 will have a color screen, multi-cartridge system, card readers, pictbridge support, possibly duplexing and fax, scanning, basic photo editing, and more. Your average $500 AIO color laser will have (for hp, example) a monochrome LCD display, copy/print/scan, and a card reader. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.174.62.95 (talk) 06:46, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]