No matter where you are reading this article, you most likely have a printer nearby. And there's a very good chance that it is an inkjet printer. Since their introduction in the latter half of the 1980s, inkjet printers have grown in popularity and performance while dropping significantly in price.

Hewlett Packard inkjet printer
An inexpensive color inkjet printer made by Hewlett Packard. See more inkjet printer pictures.

An inkjet printer is any printer that places extremely small droplets of ink onto paper to create an image. If you ever look at a piece of paper that has come out of an inkjet printer, you know that:

  • The dots are extremely small (usually between 50 and 60 microns in diameter), so small that they are tinier than the diameter of a human hair (70 microns)!
  • The dots are positioned very precisely, with resolutions of up to 1440x720 dots per inch (dpi).
  • The dots can have different colors combined together to create photo-quality images.

Shopping for a printer?
Check out our consumer product pages and read laser and inkjet printer reviews as well as photo printer prices and reviews to determine which printer is best for you.


In this edition of HowStuffWorks, you will learn about the various parts of an inkjet printer and how these parts work together to create an image. You will also learn about the ink cartridges and the special paper some inkjet printers use.

First, let's take a quick look at the various printer technologies.

 

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