Introduction to Industrial Inkjet Printing and Inkjet Printers

Inkjet Technology:
Inkjet technology has turned into a household word through its quality and presence on the user desktop as a reliable, low cost, quick, and convenient technique for printing digital files. In spite of the fact that inkjet technology has been around since the 1950s in printing special things, the effect of the innovation in a wide scope of industrial applications is just presently becoming clear.

Simple in Theory. Complex in Practice:

Theoretically, the inkjet technology is simple i.e. a printhead ejects a pattern of little drops of ink onto a substrate without any direct contact with it. The dots using different colored inks are joined together to make photo-quality images. 

However, practically the successful implementation and execution of this technology is very much complex. The dots ejected from inkjet printers are little than 70microns (the diameter of a human hair), and they should be positioned very precisely to get resolutions as fine as 1440x1440 dpi (or dots per inch). The precision calls for multi-disciplinary abilities like fluid mechanics, chemistry & engineering, implementation & operation across physics, and also a combination of cautious design. 

Industrial Inkjet Printing:
Industrial inkjet printing basically means utilizing the inkjet technology to print or deposit materials as a feature of the manufacturing process of any product on a production line. The principles stay just like the inkjet printer you’re using on your desktop. However, the scale is altogether different in terms of the machine speed and size, and furthermore in a variety of fluids that need to be deposited. The introduction of industrial inkjet printing technology into manufacturing environments can possibly make a progressive step-change to existing capacities with enormous commercial benefits. 

The potential advantages of utilizing inkjet technology are noteworthy and incorporate the provision of higher quality output, the decrease of manufacturing costs, change of procedures from analog to digital, and so on.

Inkjet Technology for Industrial Printing:
Industrial inkjet printing systems and their printheads are comprehensively classified as either DOD (drop on demand) or CIJ (continuous) with variations inside every classification. As the name infers, the DOD technology ejects ink drops from the printhead only when it is required. On the other hand, CJI technology ejects drops from the printhead continuously. These drops are then either coordinated to the substrate as printing drops or to a collector for re-circulation and re-use. 

• Continuous Inkjet printing (CIJ): Continuous inkjet printing (CIJ) is primarily used for coding and marking of products and packages. 
• Drop-on-demand inkjet printing (DOD): Drop-on-demand (DOD) is a broad classification of inkjet printing technology where drops are ejected from the printhead only when required. There are also subcategories within DOD, namely 'thermal' and 'piezo'.
• Thermal inkjet technology (TIJ): In this technology, drops are formed by rapidly heating a resistive element in a small chamber containing the ink. 
• Piezoelectric (piezo) drop on demand inkjet technology: In this technology, a piezoelectric crystal (usually lead zirconium titanate) undergoes distortion when an electric field is applied.