CIJ vs TIJ vs TTO vs Laser: A Practical Comparison

CIJ, TIJ, TTO and laser cover most industrial coding applications, and each is the right answer for some lines and the wrong one for others. The decision comes down to four things: what you are printing on, how fast the line runs, what the code has to contain, and what the technology costs to run at your volume.

Continuous Inkjet (CIJ)

• How it works: a continuous stream of ink droplets is charged and deflected onto the product; unused drops are recirculated.
• Best at: very high speeds and non-contact printing on curved, uneven or moving surfaces — bottles, cans, cables, pipes, cartons.
• Watch out for: make-up (solvent) fluid that is consumed with running time, and regular nozzle and filter maintenance. Print quality is good for text and dates, less suited to small, dense barcodes at high speed.

Thermal Inkjet (TIJ)

• How it works: a heating element vaporises ink to fire precise droplets; the printhead is usually part of the cartridge.
• Best at: high-resolution text, logos, barcodes and QR codes on cartons, labels and porous or coated surfaces, with very little maintenance.
• Watch out for: cartridge cost rises directly with how much you print, so high-volume or long messages get expensive. Bulk-supply TIJ (CTIJ) improves the economics for higher volumes.

Thermal Transfer Overprinting (TTO)

• How it works: a heated printhead melts ink from a ribbon onto flexible film, usually inside a form-fill-seal or flow-wrap machine.
• Best at: sharp, dense, scannable codes on flexible packaging — pouches, sachets, film-wrapped products.
• Watch out for: ribbon consumption driven by message length plus gap, and printhead wear, which is a real cost even though it is not a monthly invoice item.

Laser marking

• How it works: a laser beam marks or ablates the surface; there is no ink or ribbon.
• Best at: permanent codes with no consumables on materials that mark well, and lines where consumable handling is a problem.
• Watch out for: the highest purchase price of the four, and some plastic films need a laser-reactive additive to give a visible mark. Fume extraction and safety guarding may also be required.

Quick guide by substrate

• Glass, metal cans, cables, pipes: CIJ first; laser where the material marks well.
• Cartons and labels needing barcodes or QR codes: TIJ or CTIJ.
• Flexible film on a packaging machine: TTO; laser if the film is laser-ready.
• Very high speed on curved surfaces: CIJ.

Compare on total cost, not machine price

The technology with the lowest purchase price is often not the cheapest to own. CIJ carries time-driven solvent cost; TIJ's cost scales with volume; TTO's with message length; laser front-loads cost into the machine. The only fair comparison is total cost of ownership over 3–5 years at your own production volume — consumables, maintenance, downtime and rejection included.

The TCO Wizard runs exactly that comparison: pick your industry, choose two to four of these technologies, set your prints per hour and running hours, and it ranks them on 1-, 3- and 5-year total cost using the same cost engine as the rest of this site.