The production of ink-jet inks is a two stage process. First, the pigment is dispersed in an appropriate mobile phase using a mechanical stirrer. This ensures that any lumps of pigment powder are dispersed. This “pre-mix” sample is then milled using a ballmill in order to reduce the particle size and cause the break-up of any strongly bound aggregates.Dilute polymer solutions at flow rates corresponding to a transition from dripping to jetting. Thermal inkjet process can be analyzed by considering dynamics of capillary flow, capillary thinning and break-up process in low viscous and low viscosity elastic fluids such as dilute polymer solutions. The relative importance of three time scales inertial, viscous and elastic processes and length scales, initial sample size and the total stretch imposed on the sample govern stability of inkjets. Viscosity, relaxation modulus and surface tension are used to analyze stability of inkjet flows of viscous and viscoelasic fluids from glycol, polyethylene oxide, carbon black and borate esters.
Suresh Ahuja, "Flow Stability in Liquid Inkjets Printers" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP25), 2009, pp 66 - 70, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2009.25.1.art00021_1