Inkjet Printer Advantages And Disadvantages

Inkjet printing compare to the traditional screen printing or flexo, gravure printing, there are so much advantages to be discussed.

Inkjet Vs. Screen Printing

Screen printing can be called the oldest printing method, and widely used. There are so many limits in screen printing.

• Time saving, don’t to make screens step by step

  You will know that in traditional screen printing, people need to separate image into mainly 4 colors, CMYK, or use spot color which match the artwork. Then for each color making a screen plate accordingly. Paste the ink or thickener onto the media through the screen one by one. This is absolutely a time consuming work. Even it is a small run will take many days to finishing the printing. For large volume printing, people use a large rotary screen printing machine. But it can only speed up the printing process. But in inkjet printing, you can save time for screen making, image from computer to media directly. You can get the output once you finish designing and print it out. There is no MOQ limit for any kind of order.

• Accurate, colors jetting on to media together in Pico litter scale.

Whether you put each screen manually or by machine, you can see a lot of printing defections caused by inaccurate aligning. But in inkjet printing, this is finely controlled by printhead, in pico litter scale. Even you can control each ink dot by grey-scale printing mode. So there is no color limit for designers, any artwork can be printed out. Not like the screen printing only allow 12 max colors in your design artwork.

Inkjet Vs. Flexo and Gravure Printing

Flexo and gravure printing is known for it’s ability of fast printing speed and fine graphic reproduction. But the high cost of plate making blocked it for small orders.

• Cost Saving

Making plate for gravure printing a costly thing, even it can be reusable. Especially for small orders, some custom printing demand, lots of variations such as only a different barcode for your image. In such cases, inkjet printing will be a good choice for you.

• No MOQ

You will here MOQ 1000 meters balabala…when going to manage a printing project. But in inkjet printing, MOQ will never bother you. And a small business owner can run some inkjet printers.

Disadvantages of Inkjet Printing

Although there are so many advantages of inkjet printing, there also some disadvantages inside.

• Printer Maintenance Cost

This high tech printer will eating up all your patience when it gets problem if you are not a printer expert, how to define the the printing problem, ink issue? printer issue? software issue? printhead issue? The cost is both in time and money. If the printhead damaged, change the printhead is definitely a costly. But everyone will step forward after solving problems and choose a reliable partner (ink partner, printer supplier etc.) is essential for your work.

• Color Management

Every inkjet printer owner will find it difficult to do color management, because every aspect can be the factor which affection the printing color. Ink, media, ICC, printer depreciation, temperature both of environment and printer, humidity etc. So establish a working standard and get staffs trained is quite important.