Small Character and Continuous Inkjet Printer FAQ

CIJ stands for Continuous inkjet. The printer creates a stream of small ink droplets and selects some of the droplets to print, becoming the characters that land on the product. The unused droplets are cycled back into the printer to eventually become part of the ink stream again.

The CIJ printers charge the individual ink drops that make-up a message. Each drop, with its specific charge, flies through a magnetic field generated inside the printhead. The amount of charge place on the drop determines the amount of deflection it has in this field. The drops that get deflected most make up the top line of code, or the top drops of a single line code. The drops that get deflected a little make up the lower lines of code or the lower drops of a single line character. The drops that do not get any charge do not get deflected and land inside the printhead and go back into the ink system.

CIJ printers can be used to print on Paper products, plastics, metal, glass, and others. Typical applications include Milk containers, Soda cans, pharmaceuticals, small cardboard boxes, cabling, and small component marking.

CIJ printers do not ever touch the product. CIJ printers spray the ink through the air one drop at a time in a pattern that, when a moving product passes, prints the code as programmed in the printer. Typical distance from the printer’s print head to the product is 3/16 of an inch.

The difference between CIJ and DOD is that, in CIJ, the ink is being continuously circulated throughout the printer from the fluids system through the print head, and back to the fluids system. In DOD technology, the ink is only dispersed when the printer is printing.

LCM or Large Character Marking is sometimes also referred to as DOD or Drop on Demand technology. LCM printers are typically used for secondary packing where a larger font is required. CIJ fonts usually range from 1/8th of an inch to ½ of an inch in height, whereas LCM characters can be over 2 inches tall.

For the majority of Videojet CIJ printers, the recommended distance from the end of the CIJ print head to the product that it is printing on is 3/16” or about 4mm. When the print head is less than 3/16” from the product, the code gets smaller and the printed drops are closer together. When the print head is further than 3/16” the print height becomes taller, the printed drops are farther apart, and the drops land with less accuracy.

Safety Data Sheets for Videojet fluids are conveniently available for you to download in Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ format by clicking here.

Videojet offers a variety of product detectors for different types of products. Most commonly used are photo-eye type product detectors that used infra-red beams to detect when a product is coming down the line. We also offer metal detectors for metallic product detection, and small fiber optic beam detectors for detecting registry marks within a product. Call the Videojet Customer Service number for more information regarding product detectors at: 1 (800) 843-3610.

Call 1(800) 843-3610 and follow the automated phone system to speak with customer service.