Lexmark Ink Cartridges
Just about every printer manufactured requires a matching ink cartridge made by the same manufacturer as the original printer. So a Lexmark printer would require corresponding Lexmark ink cartridges according to the manufacturer’s specifications. Different makes and models of printer have different shapes, so the ink cartridge will look different and also have different electronics inside, meaning one make of ink cartridge will not interchange with another ink cartridge in that type of printer. For example, you would not purchase Lexmark ink cartridges for a HP printer.
Lexmark Ink Cartridges – The Printer Head
There is another reason some cartridges won’t interchange: some ink cartridges have the printer head actually built in the ink cartridge, which makes that ink cartridge more expensive than one that doesn’t have the printer head within the ink cartridge. And some printers have the printer head in the actual printer itself. This makes the printer generally more expensive and the corresponding ink cartridge less expensive. In the case of Lexmark, the printer head is built into the Lexmark ink cartridges and not into the actual printer. This makes it possible for Lexmark to ensure that the printer head stays in good repair as it is replaced each time a new ink cartridge is installed in the printer.
Lexmark Ink Cartridges – Thermal Inkjet
An ink cartridge is a unit that disperses ink onto paper. There are generally two types of ink cartridge. One is a thermal inkjet, which has a heating element with its own small resister or a heating element in the bottom of the cartridge, which has a very small current flowing through it when it is printing. This small current heats the ink and the ink is vaporized into a small bubble inside the nozzle. This then forces a drop of ink out of the nozzle that is in the cartridge and it flows onto the paper, so when an inkjet printer is printing on paper, it is dispersing a series of many small dots of ink that then form letters or graphics. This whole process takes milliseconds to actually complete.
Ink cartridges generally come in the main color spectrum of yellow, magenta and cyan. Cyan is blue. The other ink cartridge is black. Some ink cartridges come in one unit, which contains the black ink as well as the three colors. Some of them come in separate cartridges, with black as one and then the other three colors, which may also total five cartridges with the addition of light cyan and light magenta as part of the color spectrum. These color cartridges can combine to make hundreds of colors, so that your pictures and other printed materials look lifelike. Some of these ink cartridges are created especially for printing photos and others are intended for general printing. It all depends on the quality you desire in your end product.
There are different qualities of ink cartridge for the various functions, from high quality photo printing to everyday grey quality printing. Therefore, there are different Lexmark ink cartridges available.
