While many users have bought and are now using a printer, most people might have asked themselves 'how does a computer printer work?' The answer to this question has a lot to do with what technology the printer is using. Most home printers are inkjets so for the most part of this article we're going to focus on how inkjets work.

Other printers that can be found on the market use either laser technology or dye-sublimation (this refers mostly to photo printers). Impact (dot matrix printers) were used for a long series of years but are now slowly starting to disappear. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used and were introduced to the market in the 1980s. Throughout time, the technology was perfected and also made cheaper. Right now an inkjet printer, be it standalone or all-in-one usually can be found for a relatively small sum of money.

But how does a computer printer work that makes use of the inkjet technology? Well, the inkjet is equipped with ink cartridges and a print head. The print head contains a few nozzles that the printer uses to spray tiny drops of ink onto the paper. As soon as you install the printer drivers on your PC, the software sends the data to the print driver. The driver further translates the data in information that the printer itself can understand

As soon as the printer is turned on and ready to print, the driver sends the 'translated' info to the printer through either USB or parallel. Due to the fact that the printer has buffer memory, it partially stores the data onto it. It then proceeds to printing. The page is slowly pulled in and the motor inside the printer helps move the print head across the page. Every now and again the motor stops for a fraction of a second while the print head sprays little dots of ink on paper.

When the print head has made a complete pass, the paper is pushed out a bit more and the printer goes on to the next 'row' of ink droplets to be sprayed. This goes on until the printer finishes the page. Depending on the printer model, it can print out 1 page per minute or 15 pages per minute. When the printer is done with the sheet of paper the page is pushed out.

The 'random' movement of the print head before the printer starts the job happens after the certain printer has been idle for a while. It goes through a clean cycle to ensure that the print heads are clean and ready to print. There's also a reason why inkjet printers are so affordable. The real money is produced by the manufacturer through consumables (generally ink). Since cartridges run empty after a while, the consumer will have to replace them with ink that they've purchased from the same manufacturer.

So as long as you stick to the same printer, you become a permanent customer to the said company. Inkjet printers are preferred to other printers because they have a cheap initial buying price and can do just about anything from printing text, images to printing high quality photographs on glossy paper.