Inkjet printers are everywhere. Offices, schools and homes alike house these wonderful inventions. What you may not know is how wonderfully easy these ink machines operate. They require just a few devices and inkjet cartridges to produce their magical images.

Inkjet printers have been around for about thirty years. Over this time the lucrative industry of the inkjet printer and accessories, such as ink cartridges and ink refills, have flourished.

Companies don't just make profits from the inkjet printers alone. Printer ink cartridges, ink refill and cartridge toner are just a few of the supplies included in this market

Creating images with small dots of ink tinier than a grain of salt, the inkjet printer is a modern marvel. Inkjet cartridges, containing hundreds of tiny nozzles spraying this ink, are equally ingenious.

The inkjet cartridge toners are available in several forms. There are ink cartridges for black ink printing and inkjet cartridges for color printing. Working together, the cartridges print an image.

The type of inkjet printer you use will determine what kind of inkjet cartridge you will need. For the most part, the ink drops are produced by one of two inkjet technologies.

Canon inkjet toner cartridges, for example, utilize thermal bubbles when creating images. In these thermal inkjet printers, tiny resistors create heat, which vaporize the ink to create a bubble.

Once the bubble is produced it will then grow, purging ink through the cartridge nozzle and out onto a piece of paper. Up to one thousand of these nozzles, all firing at the same time, can be found within a printer inkjet cartridge.

The second main technology inkjet cartridges implement don't rely on ink bubbles but instead rely on crystals. These minuscule crystals line the ink reservoirs and are the integral pieces of piezoelectric printing.

Piezoelectric printing uses electricity to vibrate devices within the inkjet cartridge. The vibrations excite the ink and push it up through the nozzles, out of the cartridge and onto the paper.

Either one of these printing methods are often favored over expensive laser printing. A laser printer uses a dry ink toner cartridge as opposed to the inkjet toner cartridges described above.

Not only are the inkjet printers and inkjet printer cartridges more affordable than the laser printer and laser cartridge, you can save yourself even more money by refilling the ink and cartridge yourself or buying one from a retailer.

For example, the printing supplies store Cartridge World carries a wide range of affordable inkjet printer toner cartridges, both new and refilled. Refilled cartridges are less expensive than new cartridges and are better for the environment while maintaining the same high quality prints as a brand new ink cartridge.

Knowing you won't have to mortgage your house to buy your print supplies, your mind can rest easy and begin to create an endless array of media. Inkjet printer cartridges can produce labels, shirt decals pictures and birthday cards.

An inkjet printer and cartridges will open up a world of opportunity for those to express their imagination. And since you have learned a bit more about how inkjet printers and cartridges work, you can appreciate the process that much more.