Inkjet Printer

Inkjet printing is a digital printing method that builds up an image by spraying very fine droplets of ink onto paper, plastic, wood, metal or other material, and the printers that use it range from small home devices to large industrial machines. Continuous inkjet systems keep a pressurized stream of ink flowing and deflect it electrostatically to place drops, while drop-on-demand systems release single drops only when needed; most consumer inkjet printers use thermal inkjet technology, in which a heating element vaporizes ink to build pressure that ejects a droplet, while others use piezoelectric elements that flex under an electrical pulse to push ink out instead. Development stretches back to the early 1950s, with Canon's Ichiro Endo and Hewlett-Packard's Jon Vaught independently working out bubble-jet concepts around the same period; by the late 1970s commercial inkjet printers able to reproduce computer-generated images were on the market, led by Epson, HP and Canon, who remain, along with Brother, the dominant makers of consumer inkjet printers today.