What is a Picoliter? [inkjet printers]

[jdear]

Greetings,

Im looking at buying a printer, and ive found many of them talking about picoliter's (grrr US spelling).

On model advertises Minimum ink droplet size of 4 picoliter's and the other 1.5.

i found this:

A picoliter is a trillionth (one millionth of a millionth, or 10 to the -12th power) of a liter, which can be represented numerically as 0.000000000001/liter.

A more common use for picoliter-scale volumes is in printers; inkjet printers typically use ink droplets that measure somewhere between 2 and 25 picoliters, with smaller droplets enabling higher resolution images.

so the more picoliters the minimum ink droplet size is the higher resolution the print can be?

JD

[Nnnnsic]

Essentially yes.

To make the logic simpler:

The higher the picolitre count, the better quality the image you'll have (in theory).

Of course, ink tanks, quality of ink, image resolution, etc... all play an important role too.

[digitor]

I think it's the other way around, i.e. the SMALLER the droplet size (in picolitres, or whatever units you choose), the higher the resolution, because you get more droplets for a given amount of ink.

Cheers

[Nnnnsic]

Ummm.... no. Sorry.

A quick look into Canon's printer structure shows that a lower end printer utilises 1 picolitre whereas a higher end one uses a 2 picolitre system.

Let's check out Epson for a quick second, shall we?

It appears Epson follow the same principle. The lower end (it's not a low-end printer by any means) R800 uses 1.5 picolitre where as the higher up Epson Stylus Pro 4000 uses 3.5 picolitres.

[digitor]

The droplet size that a printer is capable of doesn't tell the whole story, Epson says here http://files.support.epson.com/pdf/600q__/600q__ti.pdf that they use small drop sizes in high resolution areas, and large ones for faster printing in low resolution areas. Surely it's fairly obvious that the smaller the amount of ink per dot sprayed on the page, the smaller (higher resolution) the dot pattern can be?

Cheers

[AlistairF]

Ummm.... no. Sorry.

A quick look into Canon's printer structure shows that a lower end printer utilises 1 picolitre whereas a higher end one uses a 2 picolitre system.

Let's check out Epson for a quick second, shall we?

It appears Epson follow the same principle. The lower end (it's not a low-end printer by any means) R800 uses 1.5 picolitre where as the higher up Epson Stylus Pro 4000 uses 3.5 picolitres.

Nnnnsic... wrong. A smaller picoliter figure gives smaller droplets and therefore a higher resolution. In your example, the R800 uses more advanced technology that the OLD 4000 model. That's why the R800 can print at 5700dpi, due to it's small droplet size. Also asmaller droplet sizes can mix colours more effectively and are less visible.

Alistair

[jdear]

in my example...

two epson printers...

Epson Stylus Photo 2200

* 96 nozzles x 7 cartridges
* 4 picoleter minimum ink droplet size
* 2880 x 1440 dpi

Epson Stylus Photo R1800

* 180 nozzles x 8 cartridges
* 1.5 picoleter minimum ink droplet size
* 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi

the 2200 $100USD more. Safe to say its the better printed in terms of res?

JD

[jdear]

my brain hurts!

[Onyx]

Adding more to the brain hurt - I don't think, strictly speaking, a smaller picolitre number gives greater resolution. It just means the printer's capable of outputting less volume of ink per dot on paper. While that generally means greater resolution, it's not necessarily so.

eg. vacuum cleaner power consumption figures do not necessarily translate into greater suction power; and in turn greater suction power does not necessarily translate into better cleaning power/dirt removal.


My conclusion: use another criteria other than smallest ink volume to narrow your choice of printer.

[MHD]

1 Pico litre is 1x10^-12 Litres
or 0.**12zeros**1 Litres

[PlatinumWeaver]

Think of it like pixels in a camera. Sometimes the numbers are what you go by, but you're much better off reading informed, objective reviews and basing your decision off of that... and your own experiences obviously..