The print head, a square component the size of a postage stamp with a huge number of holes in it, is the key part sustaining the performance of Canon's inkjet printers. Print heads are produced using the same process technologies as large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs), for which have densely packed circuits etched onto silicon wafers. Also like LSIs, the print head has evolved rapidly in recent years in terms of density and precision. Today's advanced print heads can eject ink droplets as tiny as 2 pl (picoliter; 1 trillionth of a liter) from more than 5,000 ink nozzles at a speed higher than 20,000 times per second. What's more, each and every ink droplet is ejected with uniform size, and travels in the same direction at the same speed, making possible "Canon Speed" and "Canon Image Quality."

The i70 Bubble Jet printer is a new mobile printer that maximizes Canon's print head technologies. Let's zoom in on the engineers of this printer, and the massive effort they made to pack high performance into a compact body.