Printers

Printers are the most commonly used and popular output devices. They provide
information in a permanent readable from. They produce printed output of results,
programs and data. Prints text or image on paper called hard copy. The printing
speed of a printer is measured in pages per minute (ppm).Printer resolution is often
measured in dots per inch (dpi).
Types of Printers
Printers are classified into two categories according to printing technology
(working):
 Impact printer
 Non -Impact Printer

1. IMPACT PRINTER
Impact printers these Printers use an Electro-mechanical mechanism. An impact
printer refers to all those printers whose printing heads touch the paper. His
mechanism uses hammers or pins to strike against a ribbon and paper to print the
text or image.
Types of Impact Printers
Impact printers are of two Types:
A) Character Printer
B) Line Printer
A) CHARACTER PRINTER
A Character printer prints a single character at a time. They are low speed printers. Their printing speed
lies in the range of 10-600 character / second.
Types of Character printers
Character printers are generally of two types:-

1. Daisy wheel Printer

2. Dot Matrix Printer

1.DAISY-WHEEL PRINTERS
Also known as Letter Quality Printer. These printers use a print wheel font, which
is termed as daisy wheel. Each petal or hammer of Daisy-Wheel has a character
raised on it. A motor spins the wheel at a rapid rate. When the desired character
spins to the correct position, a print hammer strikes it to produce the output.
The speed of these Daisy-Wheel Printers normally ranged between 10-75
characters per second. The noise levels of these printers are high. These printers
are most commonly used in electronic typewriter.

Advantages of a Daisy-Wheel Printer

 Can print letter quality characters.

 Gives fine quality output.
Disadvantages of a Daisy-Wheel Printer

 Printing speed is very slow

 Noisy
 Cannot print Graphics
 They are very costly.

2. DOT MATRIX PRINTER

These printers print each character as a pattern of dots. The print head is made up
of a matrix of tiny needles, typically 9 rows with 7 columns (9 *7 matrix needles).
These shapes of each character are formed in the form of tiny dots.
The printing quality of a dot matrix printer is inferior to a daisy wheel printer. But
the printing speed of a Dot Matrix Printer is range from 40 to 600 characters per
second. Dot Matrix Printers are less expensive than daisy – wheel printer.
The main advantage of dot matrix printer over latter – quality printer is that dot –
matrix printer can print characters in different shape, size and fonts. It has ability to
print charts and graphics.
Advantages of a dot matrix printer

 Dot matrix printer uses continuous paper rather than requiring individual
sheet.
 Dot matrix printer is fast and cheap.
 Dot matrix printer can print charts and graphics.

Disadvantages of a dot matrix printer

 Dot matrix printers are noisy.

 Dot matrix printers do not produce high quality.

B) LINE PRINTERS
Line printers are impact printers used with mini and mainframe computers. For
producing large volume outputs. These printers print one line of the text at a time
that is why known as line printer. Its printing speed lies in the range of 300-3000
lines per minute (LPM). Actually line printer prints only one character at a time but
because of its printing speed, observer observes that it prints a whole line a time.

Types of Line Printers

Line Printers are of two types

1. Drum Printer
 2. Chain Printer

1.DRUM PRINTER
The drum printer consists of a cylindrical drum. Asset of characters are embossed
on its surface t print. A set of print hammers is associated with each character. As
the drum rotates, the hammer wait for desired character and is activated when
character appear in front of hammer. The hammer is placed behind the paper.
There hammers strike the paper along with ribbon (ribbon is placed between
hammer and drum) against the embossed character on the surface one revolution of
drum is needed to print a line. As the line is printed the paper moves upward to
print next line.

2. CHAIN PRINTER
A chain containing characters is used for printing. The chain knows as print chain
rotates very rapidly. With each link of the chain is character font. Magnetically
driven hammers are there in each print position and all the characters which are to
be printed are received by the printer through processor. When the desired
character comes in the print position the hammers strike the ribbon and paper
against the character thus it prints one line at a time. It is very noisy and its speed
ranges from 400-24000 line per minute (LPM).

2. NON -IMPACT PRINTER

These printer uses ink and special electrical machines for producing outputs. Non –
impact printers are all those printers whose printing heads do not touch paper. A
non-impact printer forms characters and image on a piece of paper without actually
striking the paper.

Types of Non -Impact Printers

1. Laser printer
2. Inkjet printer
3. Thermal printer

1) LASER PRINTERS
They print one page at a time thus laser printer is also referred as Page Printer. A
laser printer uses electronics, lasers, xerography and other techniques, which is
called electro photographic technique.
A laser beam is directed across the surface of a light or photosensitive drum. An
image is produced, with the use of raster scan principal, in the form of tiny dots.
The laser exposed areas attract toner (or ink power). 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. After this the drum is
discharged and cleaned and ready for processing the next page.

Advantages of Laser Printers

 Very high speed.

 Low noise level
 Low maintenance requirement.
 Very high quality output on ordinary paper.
 Good graphics quality (300 dpi to 1200 dpi) and excellent graphics
capabilities.
 Supports many fonts and different character size.
 Color printing possible

Disadvantages of Laser Printers

 Very Expensive.
 Require periodic maintenance.

2) INKJET PRINTERS
Inkjet printer is non-impact character printer. It uses the dot matrix approach to
print to print text and graphics. However the dots are formed by tiny droplets of
ink. They print characters by spraying small drops of ink onto paper. For spraying
drops nozzles are used. Special type of ink having high iron content is used for
forming drops. Droplets of ink are electrically charged after leaving a nozzle when
it passes through a valve. The droplets are then guided to the proper position on the
paper by electrically charged horizontally and vertically deflection plates.
These printers can print 40-300 CPS (character/sec.) and can produce multi-color
printouts.
Advantages of Ink jet Printers

 High quality text and graphics.

 Produces no noise

Disadvantages of Thermal Printers

 Its speed is slow than other impact printer and no- impact printers.
 Its image quality is also lower than other printer [low dpi (dot per inch) ,
bout 180 dpi].
 Ink cartridge is costly.

3) THERMAL PRINTER
The printer that produces images by pushing electrically heated pins against special
heat – sensitive paper, is known as thermal printer.
This type of printer uses a special heat sensitive paper. These papers have a special
heat sensitive coating. When a spot on the special paper is heated, it becomes dark.
A character is printed with a matrix of dots. The heating element is heated by
electric current. We can also say the heat sensitive paper as chemically treated
paper. In this type of printer neither the ink nor the ribbon in involved.
To print a character the printing head is moved first to the correct character
position. Then the heating elements of desired character are turned on. After a
short time they are turned off. There after the print head is moved to the next
character. Such printers have a speed of about 200 characters per second.
Advantages of Thermal Printers

 Low noise
 Can produce high quality color output.

Disadvantages of Thermal Printers

 Expensive
 Slow Speed
 Required special paper

Advantages of Optical character Reader (OCR):

Following are the advantages or advantages of OCR:

 Information of OCR can be readable with high degree of accuracy. Flatbed

scanners are very accurate and may produce reasonably top quality images.
 Processing of OCR information is fast. Large quantities of text are often input
quickly.
 A paper based form are often became an electronic form which is
straightforward to store or send by mail.
 It is cheaper than paying someone amount to manually enter great deal of text
data. Moreover it takes less time to convert within the electronic form.
 The latest software can re-create tables also as original layout.
 This process is much faster as compared to the manual typing the information
into the system
 Advanced version can even Re-create tables, columns and even produce sites.
Disadvantages of Optical character Reader (OCR):
Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of OCR :

 OCR text works efficiently with the printed text only and not with handwritten
text. Handwriting must be learnt by the pc.
 OCR systems are expensive.
 There is the need of lot of space required by the image produced.
 The quality of the image can be lose during this process.
 Quality of the ultimate image depends on quality of the first image.
 All the documents got to be checked over carefully then manually corrected.
 Not 100% accurate, there are likely to be some mistakes made during the
method.
 Not worth doing for little amounts of text.
 Comparison Chart between Impact & Non-Impact Printers

S. N. Features Impact printers Non-Impact printers

It produces print on paper with a non-
It produces print on paper by
1 Mechanism striking mechanism. It uses Electro
striking mechanism.
static or thermal mechanism.
It uses pins, hammers or wheel to It uses laser, spray of special ink, or
2 Working strike against an inked heat and pressure to
ribbon to print on a paper. print on paper.
impact printers has no color Non-Impact printers can print clear
3 Color output
capacity color, good for printing pictures
Impact printers are normally less Non-Impact printers are more
4 Cost
expansive. expansive.
Except of dot matrix printer, these
Graphics These printer can easily print graphical
5 printers cannot print graphics
Image images
images
Impact printers use special inked Non-Impact printers use toner or
6 Tools ribbons to produce print cartridge for printing on
on paper when print head strikes. paper.
Non-Impact printers are very fast.
Impact printers are low speed
7 Speed They can print many pages
printers.
per minute.
Non-Impact printers do not make a
Impact printers are high noise
Sound effects noise level because they do not use
8 level because they strike print
or Noise striking mechanism in which print
head.
head strikes on ribbon and paper etc.
The character style cannot be It can print different types of
Character
9 changed in the impact printer characters form busing the individual
style
(except of dot matrix) printer
Impact printers can produce Non-impact printers can produce only
10 Copy print
multiple copies of the text. a single copy of the text
Impact printers use old printing Non-impact printers use latest printing
11 Technology
technologies. technologies.
Dot matrix, Daisy wheel
Laser printers, Inkjet
12 Examples printers, Drum Printers and Chain
printers and Thermal Printers etc.
Printers etc.