Friday, 22 February 2013

All About Ink & Printers

By Keren Kipfer


Without ink, our lives would be vastly different. We see it on everything from our food containers to our books and periodicals to our clothing. Ancient forms of ink were made from native plants, as well as tar, pitch and even burned bones. The inks of today are highly precise mixtures that ensure a quality finished product.

For most people, their daily contact with actually using ink happens at work or perhaps in the home office. There are a huge variety of these basic office printers, from large machines that can print, collate and staple hundreds of copies to smaller machines suitable for general office needs. These printers are easy to use, and pre-mixed ink cartridges are easy to install. For industrial use printers, this process is a bit more complicated.

Sophisticated types of inkjet printers, either a drop-on-demand or DOD printer or perhaps a continuous inkjet (CIJ) printer, are used in many industries to print product id information to their products. All food products and beverages will list an identification or a batch number, as well as a sell-by date or perhaps an expiration date. Pharmaceutical products also need to have similar types of identification, so this industry also will use either CIJ or DOD printers. However, these printers also are used in the electronics industry, automotive industry and for hundreds of other types of consumer products.

The continuous inkjet printer, also known as a CIJ printer is produced by many different companies, including Domino, Maxima and VideoJet. With a CIJ printer, liquid ink is moved through what is known as a gun body and then into a microscopic nozzle where ink droplets are pumped out constantly, as a rate of anywhere from about 60,000 to 160,000 drops per second and the ink dries quickly, as well. You can use a CIJ printer to imprint product ids on just about any type of material, from glass bottles to food packaging to plastic, or you can also use a drop-on-demand printer.

A drop-on-demand printer, which is typically just called a DOD printer, can be either piezoelectric or thermal, and both have their advantages and disadvantages. A piezo DOD printer can use a wide variety of inks, while a thermal printer must use thermal inks, and there is less of a selection. Thermal inks, however, do cost less than inks for piezo DOD coders. Thermal DOD printers use heat to help propel droplets of ink onto a surface, while piezo coders use an electric charge to force ink in and out of tiny nozzles in the form of microscopic droplets of ink. Altima, Domino and many other companies produce these DOD coders for use by companies that need to place product ids on their various goods.

Whether you need to use an industrial DOD or CIJ printer, it is a good idea to purchase a refurbished model, as these are far less expensive, but typically the quality is still excellent. In addition, most product id service providers also can provide you ink and make-up fluid for any brand of printer. This is also much less expensive than purchasing directly from the manufacturer of your product id coder.




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