Abstract
History of ink jet research and development is reviewed briefly. In this review, marking principles and features of each ink jet systems are described.
Next, introduced new technologies since 1980s to improve fundamental performances of ink jet printer or resolve issues imposed on ink jet and the background are summarized.
Ink jet with simple process is categorized as the concentrated functional marking, under this model, ink jet has developed and extended market depending performance progress of elemental technologies. However performance progress of elemental technologies has been dulled recently, noticeable growth of ink jet is unhopeful in the same old direction under same model.
2 paths exist for ink jet growth in the future. One is expansion of ink jet to various applications where ink jet can continue to provide values with using simple process under same model. The other is marking model conversion to shared functional marking model. Namely, ink jet will add peripheral technologies and share approaches to high level issues among these peripheral technologies.
