Basic information about ink cartridge

If you own an inkjet printer, you must know that an ink cartridge is a major component of your printer. The role of the cartridge is to store and distribute ink.

A vast majority of inkjet printers make use thermal technology. The ink reservoirs in the printer contain a small metal plate or resistor for conducting heat. An electrical current is made to pass over the thermal device to make it hot. The heat allows the ink to form a sort of air bubble in the nozzle. This further causes the ink to come out of the nozzle onto the paper that is being printed.

Most printers make use of two ink cartridges. One contains black ink and the other contains coloured ink. Coloured ink cartridges consist of coloured ink of all the primary colours. Depending one one’s printing needs and requirements, one may buy an inkjet printer that may separate the cartridges into specific primary colours.

It is important to know that the ink cartridges made for one brand of the inkjet printer are incompatible with another brand of the printer. You just can’t use a Brother printer ink cartridge with an HP printer or Canon printer. If you try using it, your printer can be damaged without repair.

Original ink cartridges as those produced by the manufactures of inkjet printers are quite expensive. The price of a black or coloured cartridge is most cases is almost equivalent to that of a new printer itself. Rather than buying expensive original ink cartridge a lot of people prefer to buy compatible ink cartridges. Compatible Printer cartridges are sold by manufacturers other than the Original Equipment Manufacturer but they adhere to all the product specifications given by the OEM for a specified brand of printer.

By buying remanufactured inkjet cartridges and bulk buying, one can further avoid paying exceedingly high price for the inkjet cartridges.