Here’s a little educational piece for everyone. We’ll call this Printing 101 – Inkjet Cartridges.

Everyone knows what an inkjet cartridge is, you may just refer to it with a different name . . . ink cartridge, printer cartridge, the *$#%! thing that stops working at the worst time and costs me a lot of money to replace. All these are correct! But, here’s the official definition.

An inkjet cartridge is the replaceable component of an inkjet printer that contains the ink that is spread on paper when printing (Source: Wikipedia).  It may also contain a print head. The important thing to know here is that inkjet refers to a specific type of printer and cartridge. Inkjet cartridges are the cartridges that contain liquid ink. Inkjet printers only use inkjet cartridges. The term inkjet comes from the cartridge jetting (spraying) ink on to paper.

Inkjet cartridge contain one or more partitioned chambers that inks are held in. Black cartridges have a single chamber. Color cartridges often have 3, or more, chambers. Most color cartridges have 3 chambers which hold three primary colors; cyan, magenta, and yellow. These three colors are mixed together to form every other color you print (that’s Art 101 and you are going to have to go to a different blog to read more about that).

A print head is the metallic strip, often copper in color, that is placed on a cartridge. This strip communicates with the printer. Micro chips have become popular additions to to inkjet cartridges over the last 5-7 years. They communicate with the printer as well, but allow for more communication than a print head does.

There are two different types of inkjet cartridges – Thermal and Piezoelectric. They type of cartridge you use depends on who the maker of your printer is.

Thermal inkjet cartridges are favored by companies like Canon, Dell, HP, and Lexmark. Inside each partitioned compartment there is a heating element with a tiny metal resistor. The printer gives a signal to the cartridge (through the chip or print head) and a small current flows through the resistor, which warms the heating element. The ink surrounding the element is heated and vaporized into a tiny air bubble within the nozzle of the cartridge (think of the nozzle like a hose). As the volume of ink exceeds the size of the nozzle, an ink droplet is forced out of the nozzle and onto the paper. This process only takes milliseconds!

The word thermal means pertaining to, or caused by heat. This definitely describes the thermal inkjet cartridge.

Epson is the sole printer manufacturer to favor Piezoelectric inkjet cartridges. These cartridges use a piezoelectric crystal in each nozzle (still thinking hose) rather than a heating element. When a electrical current is applied (still have to use an electrical current) the crystal changes shape/size and forces a drop of ink from the nozzle.

Epson claims that Piezoelectric cartridges are better because they can utilize  ink that does not do well when heated. They also claim that these cartridges can produce smaller drops of ink, which means better print outs.

So, there you have it. Inkjet cartridges are rather simple looking devices, but there’s a whole lot of technology that goes in to them so they can produce amazing looking prints.

Did you learn anything from this? If you did let me know. If you didn’t, let me know too. Thanks!