Bakers use bioprinters to print live cells onto cakes? Cool! Have to get me one of those ;-)

Yes, thermal does work much better than you would natively expect? In fact, other research groups have specifically looked for heat shock effects on live cells after printing using thermal inkjet, and found very little sign of any. Thermal and piezo printers both seem to work well to print live cells, although occasionally you hear one side claim that the other's printer technology doesn't work (Thermal printer will cook the cell! Piezo printers use the same frequencies as used to sonicate cells!)