The Search for Printer Ink Efficiency
Inkjet printers using liquid printer ink started appearing on the market for commercial and home users in the late 1980s. The technology had been under development for over 20 years before its introduction. The laser printer was first developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) by Gary Starkweather and released in 1971. The printer was based on a modified Xerox copier utilising laser technology to produce images on the paper.
Laser printers, using dry toner powder as opposed to “wet” ink, dominated the market for applications requiring high volume, rapid turnaround print output. At around the same time that laser printers were introduced, printer companies were already seeing the potential of inkjet technology. It took until the mid-1980s for companies to start coming up with ways to create an affordable inkjet printer that would reliably create high-quality prints.
Controlling the relationship between the print head, the printer ink, and the paper proved to be challenging. Creating a controlled discharge of ink through the print head onto the paper, while preventing the printer ink from drying in the printhead and clogging it, took several years for researchers to solve. By the late 1980s, companies like Hewlett Packard, Epson, and Canon overcame the technical challenges, and liquid inkjet printers started becoming available in the marketplace.
Applying Printer Ink to Paper
The precise control of the ink deposition onto the paper was solved in several ways by different companies. IBM used electrically charged droplets to rapidly coat the paper with printer ink but this approach never became popular. Siemens came up with the “drop-on-demand” inkjet printer in 1977, which sprayed ink onto the paper only where needed.
Canon was one of the first companies to discover that heating ink in a syringe would cause droplets to shoot out of the needle tip. They inserted heating elements into their printer cartridges and sent a pulse of electric current through the element to generate a bubble in the ink chamber. The increase in pressure propelled an ink droplet out of the print nozzle and onto the paper. Canon coined the term “BubbleJet” for their technology. Most manufacturers use drop-on-demand technology for their printers, including HP, Canon, and Lexmark. All these companies use thermal technology (heat) to propel droplets of ink from the print head, but Epson developed their own technology, based on the piezo-electric effect, to eject the printer ink droplets.
The Search for Printer Ink Efficiency
Epson initially competed in the printer market against the other leading brands using similar technology. In 1993, Epson introduced their first major inkjet printer innovation, unique to them, when they brought out printheads that use micro piezo crystals to “spray” the printer ink onto the paper. Piezo-electric printheads deliver precise, consistent ink droplet size and shape to provide superb print quality that competitors find difficult to equal. Epson’s next innovation did not address print quality but another important issue, namely printer ink efficiency and cost per print.
Epson introduced their second printer innovation in 2015 with the launch of their EcoTank line of all-in-one printers. The EcoTank and Epson SuperTank printers featured a revolutionary ink-consumable technology which has since been emulated by all the leading brands. Ink tank machines are unlike standard cartridges printers. They use large ink reservoirs situated in the printer that are refilled with ink from bottles of printer ink supplied with the printer. With any review of the lowest cost per print, inkjet printers will be dominated by printers that employ ink tank technology.
Conventional cartridge printers use printer ink cartridges mounted on the printhead. This places obvious limitations on what size and weight the printer ink cartridges can be. This limits the ink volume the unit can contain. With ink tank technology, each bottle contains enough ink to print thousands of pages. Epson claims savings of up to 90% over printers using conventional ink cartridges. In addition to unbeatable value, they also offer the convenience of far longer intervals between ink replacements.
Buy From Printer and Print Consumable Experts
We at Raydian can provide all your office and home office requirements. We have years of experience with printers, printing, and print consumables. We can even offer advice on how to maximise your printer ink efficiency to keep you printing for longer at the lowest possible cost.
Selecting the right printer, multifunction device, or office automation product is easy with our expert help. Getting the correct consumables for your printer is even easier. Provide us with your printer brand name and model number or bring in the empty cartridge that needs replacing in and we will find the correct replacement unit for you. Contact us today for your print consumables.