Solid Ink Printers

Solid Ink printers, also known as phase-change printers, are a type of thermal move printer. They use hard sticks of CMYK colored ink (similar in consistency to candle wax), which are melted and fed into a piezo crystal operate print-head. The printhead sprays the ink on a turning, oil coated drum. The paper then passes over the print drum, at which time the picture is transferred, or transfixed, to the page.

Solid ink printers are most frequently used as color office printers, and are excellent at printing on transparencies and other non-porous media. Solid ink printers can produce excellent results. Purchase and working operating cost are identical to laser printers. Drawbacks of the technology contain high power utilization and long warm-up times from a cold state.