Enabling Wear-Free and Energy Efficient Printing with Piezo-Driven Printheads

The inkjet process revolutionized printing technology over 40 years ago – with the help of piezo technology. Today, piezo driven printheads are still the gold standard in these applications. Aqueous solutions such as ink can be printed just as well as highly viscous media such as wax or gels. Printing technology has long evolved past the boundaries of paper printing. There are no limits to the choice of printing material: Paper, plastic, ceramic, or metal. Especially in dynamic printed image generation such as digital printing, large areas can be continuously printed with the highest resolution in the shortest time.

The piezo actuators used for this purpose work with ultrafast response times and high frequency. In these applications, they create droplets with the tiniest liquid volumes down to the picoliter range by applying a contactless pressure impulse to a fluid chamber. For this purpose, they only use the piezoelectric solid-state effect and they do not have moveable parts, therefore, they are completely wear and maintenance free. They are also energy efficient: At rest, these components do not need any electrical power.

From our large selection of piezo components and actuators with different geometries, customized PICMA^® piezo multilayer actuators are particularly suited for printing applications. They offer long lifetime and a comparably small control voltage.