about inkjet and laser printers

About Inkjet and Laser printers

Inkjet printers

Inkjet printers are generally small machines with relatively slow output. They are the most popular form of printer for home and small business due to their low cost and quality output. Inkjet printers are great for printing photographs and other high standard colour printing.

The printer works by spraying very small ink droplets onto the paper as it is passed through the printer. The high precision of the ink as it is sprayed from the cartridge produces excellent printing results. The two main inkjet processes used by these printers are thermal bubble, which uses heat, and piezoelectric which uses an electric charge to place the ink.

Inkjet cartridges are cheap compared to laser cartridges but are able to produce far fewer pages of output and so will need replaced more often.

Laser Printers

Laser printers are fast and have low running costs as laser toner cartridges last for a long time. This makes laser printers popular with businesses. Colour laser printers are expensive so the more economical black and white lasers that use black toner only are much more common.

Laser printers work using static electricity: a charge is created using a revolving drum or cylinder and a laser beam pointed at the drum discharges the printing surface where the printing pattern occurs. This produces a surface with positive and negative areas. This surface is then coated with toner, a positively charged powder which clings only to the negatively charged areas, and is then transferred to the paper, making the positive image. The paper then passes through heated rollers fusing the toner to the paper. Colour lasers make multiple passes, in order to mix the different colour toners.

Colour laser printers are often used to produce high-resolution color digital proofs at print studios.