Types of Printer & their Work :-A Printer prints information and data from the computer onto a paper. It can print documents in color as well as in black and white. The quality of a printer is determined by the clarity of a print. The speed of a printer is measured in Characters Per Second (CPS), Lines Per Minute (LPM) and Pages Per Minute (PPM). Printers resolution is a numerical measure of print quality that is measured in Dots Per Inch (DPI).
Printer Are Divided Into Two Basic Categories
- Impact printer
- Non Impact Printer
Impact Printer
This type of printer strikes paper and ribbon together to form a character, like a typewriter. Impact Printer can print a character or an entire line at a time. They use pins for hammers that pressed an inked ribbon against the paper. They are less expensive, fast and can make multiple copies with multipart paper.
Merits
- Very low consumable costs
- Useful for bulk printing due to low cost
- There is physical contact with the paper to produce an image
- Print only one character at a time
- Impacts printers can produce multiple copies of the text
- They use pins or hummer that pressed an inked ribbon against the paper
Demerits
- They are noisy
- Print quality is not good than the non impact printers
Types of Impact Printer
- Dot Matrix Printer
- Daisy Wheel Printer
- Line Printer
- Drum Printer
Dot Matrix Printer
It forms characters using rows of pins which impact the ribbon on top of the paper therefore also called pin printers. A character is printed with the selected number of dots from a matrix of dots.The print head contains a vertical array of 7,9,14,18 or even 24 pins. A character is printed in a number of steps. One dot-column of the dot matrix is taken up at a time. The selected dots of column are printed by the print head at a time as it moves across a line. Dot Matrix printers print one character at a time. It prints characters and images as a pattern of dots. These printers are slow, noisy and are not commonly used for personal computers anymore. Many dot matrix printer are bidirectional, that is they can print characters from either direction, i. e. left or right.
Merits
- Dot matrix printers are very flexible
- They do not have fixed character fonts
- A dot matrix printer can print any shape of a character or image by software
- They are in expensive and reliable
Demerits
- They are loud and slow
- They do not have very good printing quality
Daisy Wheel Printer
In Daisy Wheel Printers, characters are fully formed on the petals, like typewriter keys. Daisy Wheel printers produce high-resolution output and are more reliable than dot matrix. It can print one character at a time. In daisy wheel printer, round disk extends a portion of the wheel making contact with ink ribbon that makes contact with paper for creating the character. This procedure is repeated for each key when it is pressed. These printers are fitted with unchangeable print heads called daisy wheel. To print each character, the wheel is rotated and the appropriate Stoke struck against an inked ribbon. Daisy wheel cannot produce high quality print graphics. The speed of this printer is about 100 CPS.
Merits
- More reliable than dot matrix
- Print one character at a time
- The speed measured in 30-90 CPS
Demerits
- They are noisy
- They do not print graphics and image
- They are slow to print character
Line Printer
It is a high speed printer capable of printing an entire line of text at once instead of one or more characters at a time. These are impact shaped characters printers which print one line at a time. Print quality of printer of line printer is not high.
Merits
- They are in expensive and easy to buy
- Print one line at a time
Demerits
- Their print quality is low
- It is a noisy printer
- Quality of line printer is not high
Drum Printer
An old line printer technology that uses formed character images around a cylindrical drum as its printing mechanism. When the desired character for the selected position rotated around the hammer line,the hammer hit the paper from behind and pushed it into the ribbon and onto the character.
Non Impact Printer
This type of printer uses electrostatic chemicals and inkjet technologies .They do not hit or impact a ribbon to print .It can produce high quality graphics and often a wide variety of fonts than impact printer.
Characteristics of Non-Impact printers
- Faster than impact printers
- They are not noisy
- High quality
- Support many fonts and different character size.
Types of Non – impact printer
- Inkjet Printer
- Laser Printer
- Thermal Printer
- Electromagnetic Printer
- Electrostatic Printer
Inkjet Printer
It uses the dot-matrix approach to print text and graphics. One type of an earlier inkjet printer model uses one or more nozzles in the print head that emit a steady stream of tiny ink drops. Each droplets is charged as it passes through a valve. Then it passes through horizontal and vertical deflecting plates. These plates deflect the ink drops to direct them to the desired spots on the paper to form the impression of a character. In this type of printer, a continuous steam of ink drops is used. The speed of inkjet printers lies in the range of 40-300 characters per second. The average life of an inkjet print head is about 10 billion characters which is five times more than an impact type of Dot Matrix printer.
Merits
- High print quality text and graphics
- These printers are quite in operation and have good print or picture quality
- They are available with black and coloured ink cartridges
- The speed of inkjet printers lies in the range of 40+300 character per second
Demerits
- They are very expensive
- The speed quality is not high than laser printer
- Expenses on Cartage is very high
- During the summer ink Dries quickly
- Sometimes leaking ink causes the paper to deteriorate
Laser Printer
Laser printer are non impact type of printer.They print one page at a time. These printers use laser or other light source to produce and image on a photosensitive drum .The computer control the laser beam to turn it on and off . An image is produced following the raster scan principal.The laser -exposed areas attract the toner (an ink powder). There after, the drum transfers the toner to the paper. The paper then moves to a fusing station where the toner is permanently fused on the paper with heat or pressure. Next the drum is discharged and cleaned .Now the drum is ready for processing the next page a modern high speed laser printer.
Merits
- It is suitable for mass printing
- It has low cost
- Low quality requirements for paper
- It has very fast printing speed
- The machine is relatively stable
- It has greater speed than an inkjet printer
- Laser printers also produce high quality text and graphics
Demerits
- It has expensive toner
- Expensive to repair lots of complex equipment inside
- It’s toner is harmful to humans
- It’s initial investment cost is high
- It has expensive cartridge
- Expenditure on construction is very high
Thermal Printer
This type of printer uses a special heat sensitive paper . These paper have a special heat sensitive coating . When a spot on the special paper is heated, it becomes dark . A character is printer with a matrix of dots. A print head consists of 5x7or 7×9 matrix of tiny heating elements. The heating element is heated by electric current. To print a character , the printing head is move first to the correct character position. Then , the heating elements for the desired character turned on . After a short time they are turned off. Thereafter the print head is moved to the next character position . Such printers have a speed of about 20 characters per second (CPS) only.
Merits
- It is highly reliable
- It has lower maintenance costs
- It has high speed printing quality
- A speed of about 20 character per second CPS only
Demerits
- It is relatively slow and expensive
- It requires special paper for printing
- It can get hot and put out more ink than needed
- Thermal printer don’t print colors as vibrantly
- Labels tends to fade
Electromagnetic Printer
Electrographic or electro-photographic printers are very fast printers and they fall under the category of post printers.They can produce documents at a speed of over 20000 lines per minute that is more than 250 pages per minute.
Merits
- They work at a very high speed
- An electromagnetic print head EBS 1500 series printing system
Demerit
- They are expensive that’s why they are used less
Electrostatic Printer
These printers are generally used for large format printing. They are favoured by large printing shops because of their ability to print fast and making low cost.
Merits
- It is reliable .
- It has ability to print multi pages documents .
- Print up to 5000 lines per minute .
- The cost of paper is lower .
- They are favourable by large printing shops because of their fast printing quality.
Demerits
- Create noise when the pins or type face strike the ribbon to the paper
- It is manually time consuming
- Their color performance is low
- Their speeds are limited by waiting for the next input
3D printer
As the name implies, a 3D printer allow user to print and object as three dimensional CAD (Computer Aided Design) images. Also called an additive manufacturing 3D printing is an innovative technology that helps business cut costs and develop new methods of production. 3D printing is a blend of Software and Hardware. The 3D printing process start with the computer aided (CAD) file.
Merits
- They allows to print of more flexible design.
- Their printing can manufacture parts within hours which speeds up the Prototyping process.
- They print on demand .
- They are less expensive .
- They are strong and have light weight parts .
Demerits
- They consume high energy .
- They aren’t user friendly .
- 3D printing technology is expensive .
- 3D printer technology brings potential reduction in human labour.
- They are slow.
- These printers have restricted build size.
Conclusion
This post will help you to identify the different types of printers. After reading this post you will able to understand how different printers work and how are they different from each other. If you like this blog then visit our other blogs. You will get more information about computer devices and their applications. Thank you.
