Presumably this is a question that many new and old customers who need to buy inkjet printers often wonder. Although they are all marking equipment, the difference between small character inkjet printers and thermal foam inkjet printers is actually very big. Today INCODE will share some technical knowledge in this area with you, so that everyone can recognize these two devices more easily and quickly.
1. Different working principles
The small character inkjet printer is a CIJ inkjet printer, also known as a dot matrix inkjet printer. Its working principle is to continuously eject ink from a single nozzle under pressure. After the crystal oscillates, it breaks to form ink dots. After charging and high-voltage deflection, characters are scanned on the surface of a moving object. Most of them are used in the packaging market with low imaging requirements and high speed. With this technology, the ink drop stream is generated in a linear shape, and the image is generated by a plate deflection. The printing speed is fast, but the printing accuracy is low, and the printing effect is dot matrix text or numbers.
Thermal foam inkjet printer, also known as TIJ inkjet printer, is a high-resolution inkjet printer. Its working principle is to use thin-film resistors to instantly heat the ink in the ink ejection area (instantly heated to a temperature above 300°C). Numerous tiny bubbles, the bubbles gather into big bubbles at a very fast speed and expand, forcing ink droplets to eject from the nozzle to form the required text, numbers, and barcodes. When the bubble continues to expand, it will disappear and return to the resistor; when the bubble disappears, the ink in the nozzle will shrink back, and then the surface tension will generate suction, and then draw new ink to the ink ejection area to prepare for the next cycle of ejection. The printing speed is fast and the accuracy is high, and the printing effect is high-resolution text, numbers, bar codes, two-dimensional codes and patterns.
2. Different application industries
Small character inkjet printers are widely used in food, beverages, pipes, medical packaging, wine, cables, daily cosmetics, electronic components, PCB circuit boards and other products. Common inkjet printing content includes common three Period (production date, validity period, shelf life), and product quantity, production place, time information, etc.
Thermal foaming inkjet printers have huge advantages in packaging identification and transcoding printing. They are often integrated on packaging equipment such as rewinder packaging machines or labeling machines and other automated platforms. They can be used in labels or some permeable materials. Some common three-phase codes and other content can be printed on the top, and large-format variable information can also be printed, such as common two-dimensional code information, barcode information, multi-line patterns and multi-line text and digital logos, etc., and the printing speed is fast. With high resolution, it can achieve a printing effect similar to that of printed matter, and the fastest can reach 120m/min.
3. Different printing heights
The printing height of small character inkjet printers is generally between 1.3mm-12mm. Many small character inkjet printer manufacturers will advertise that their equipment can print 18mm or 15mm height. In fact, it is rarely achieved during normal operation. At such a height, the distance between the print head and the product will be too far, and the printed characters will be very scattered. It seems that the quality of the print effect will be greatly reduced, and the dot matrix may also be irregular, which affects the product quality. On the whole, it is a relatively common product. The height of information jet printing is generally between 5-8mm.
The printing height of the thermal foaming inkjet printer is much higher. For the common thermal foaming inkjet printer, the printing height of a single nozzle is 12mm, and the printing height of a single printer can reach 101.6mm. A host can carry 4 nozzles. Seamless splicing can realize super-large format coding and realize some integrated coding and marking solutions similar to the sides of corrugated boxes.
4. Use different consumables
The consumable used by the small character inkjet printer is ink. When the machine is running, the ink is recycled and the ink concentration is unstable; the consumable used by the thermal foam inkjet printer is ink cartridges. The system adopts the ink cartridge and nozzle design integrated, and it is ready to use when the machine is running. That is, the ink density is consistent.
5. Environmental impact and maintenance are different
Small-character inkjet printers need to add thinners when they are running. The thinners will evaporate continuously, which is easy to cause waste, and the smell is unpleasant, which pollutes the environment; the control system is complicated, and the parameters need to be precisely adjusted to ensure normal use, and the failure rate is high , Complex maintenance. Thermal foaming inkjet printer does not need to use diluent, cleaning fluid, no ink supply system, to prevent ink pollution, zero impact on the environment, easy installation and replacement of ink cartridges, simple operation, simple maintenance.
Post time: Jan-05-2022