There is a basal divide in the inkjet printer industry, piezoelectric printers such as Epson (Mutoh/Roland/Mimaki), vs Canon/Hp/Lexmark using bubblejet technology.
An inkjet printer has an ink depot that connects to a firing room that is attached to a nozzle - where the ink droplet emerges. The difference in the middle of the two technologies lies in the firing chamber.
Piezoelectric crystals are pretty phenomenal things, when you put an galvanic fee over them they change shape and they can do this swiftly and repeatably. A tiny crystal in the firing room twitches and creates a pressure wave that expels a droplet from the nozzle.
A bubblejet printer has a tiny heater element within the firing room which boils a tiny drop of the ink, this expands explosively and creates the pressure wave to drive the drop from the nozzle.
Why does the ink come out of the nozzle rather than blowing back up to the reservoir? Well in a way it does, it's just a matter of scale. If you are standing by a construction and there is a small explosion in the middle of you and the building...which one moves the most?
So there isn't a vast difference in the middle of the two methods. The consequences of their differences do lead to some major issues.
A bubblejet head, using a heater element and boiling ink is less robust than a piezo crystal running near room temperature. The heater can burn out foremost to failure of the nozzle especially if run dry but more importantly the boiling of ink by the element causes deposits to form on the element (the Japanese engineers refer to it as biscuiting). This can lead to a loss of efficiency over the life of the head. Consequently bubblejet heads tend to be supplanted frequently, often with every ink cartridge change where the head is integrated into the cartridge. Piezo heads are fixed and only the ink is replaced.
The deposit during boiling is a serious constraint upon the formulation of the ink and it is crucial that the formulation is correct. Third party inks can be a poor choice.
Piezo heads have a much greater formulation tolerance.
Which technology is better?
Both do the job at almost the same price and, if you can't tell the difference on the paper, ...who cares.
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