It was the 1960s when the inkjet printer technology first time made its appearance in the world of printers. Siemens in 1951 was the first company who patented the inkjet printing technology. The continuous printing process in Inkjet printing took a drivers seat during the 1970s when IBM developed this technology. Neither Encad nor Mimaki had yet developed any strategy regarding the optimization of inkjet printer management process.
Technologies for improvement of inkjet printers were further developed with the introduction of continuous ink process sot as to control and put in place a continuous flow of droplets to the printing device or into another vacant space so that such droplets could be re-circulated by application of some electrical field to these inkjet droplets that are pre-charged. The ultimate invention in this field was the bulk ink system that has now become the widely accepted standards for economy in use of ink for wide format inkjet printers.
Wide format inkjet printers in circulation were Encad, Mimaki, and Epson. There were a few others but their presence made little impact on the market. One of the best innovations among the Encad parts was the introduction of “drop-on-demand” technology and devices to manage the process. In this process the printer would eject ink droplets only when required by the printing devices and not otherwise. Thus the complexities of hardware requirement to manage continuous flow of ink were addressed effectively. To day’s inkjet printers are blissfully free of such problems.
