The chemistry of inkjet printer ink Whatever technology is
applied to printer hardware, the final product consists of ink
on media, so these two elements are vitally important when it
comes to producing quality results. The quality of output from
inkjet printers ranges from poor, with dull colors and visible
banding, to excellent, near-photographic quality. Two entirely
different types of ink are used in inkjet printers: one is slow
and penetrating and takes about ten seconds to dry, and the
other is fast-drying ink which dries about 100 times faster. The
former is generally better suited to straightforward monochrome
printing, while the latter is typically used for color printing.
Because different inks are mixed to create colors, they need to
dry as quickly as possible to avoid blurring. If slow-drying ink
is used for color printing, the colors tend to bleed into one
another before they’ve dried. The ink used in inkjet technology
is water-based, and this caused the results from some of the
earlier printer m