Printers

 A printer is an electromechanical device which converts the text and graphical

documents from electronic form to the physical form.
 Generally they are the external peripheral devices which are connected with the
computers or laptops through a cable or wirelessly to receive input data and print them
on the papers.
 A wide range of printers are available with a variety of features ranging from printing
black and white text documents to high quality colored graphic images.
 Printer is an output device, which is used to print information on paper.
 A device that prints text or illustrations on paper.
 Printers are classified by the following characteristics:
Quality of type: The output produced by printers is said to be either letter quality (as
good as a typewriter), near letter quality, or draft quality.
Speed: Measured in characters per second (cps) or pages per minute (ppm),
o The speed of printers varies widely.
Graphics: Some printers can print only text.
o Other printers can print both text and graphics.
Fonts : Some printers are limited to one or a few fonts.
Types of Printer
 There are two types of printers:

1. Impact Printers
2. Non-Impact Printers

 The important difference between

impact and non-impact printers is that
impact printers are much noisier.
1. Impact Printers
 The impact printers include all printers that print the characters by striking them on
the ribbon which is then pressed on the paper.
Characteristics of Impact Printers:
 Very low consumable costs
 Very noisy
 Useful for bulk printing due to low cost
 There is physical contact with the paper to produce an image
 These printers are of two types

A. Character printers B. Line printers

A. Character Printers
 Character printers are the printers which print one character at a time.
 These are further divided into two types:

I. Dot Matrix Printer(DMP) II. Daisy Wheel

I. Dot matrix Printer

 Dot Matrix Printer is one of the most popular printers in the market.
 These printers are popular because of their ease of printing and economical price.
 Creates characters by striking pins against an ink ribbon.
 Each pin makes a dot, and combinations of dots form characters and illustrations.
 Each character printed is in form of pattern of dots and head consists of a Matrix of Pins
of size (5*7, 7*9, 9*7 or 9*9) which comes out to form a character that is why it is called
Dot Matrix Printer.
 Dot-matrix printers can print up to 500 characters per second.

Important characteristics Dot-matrix printers:

 Speed: Given in characters per second (cps),

the speed can vary from about 50 to over 500
cps.

o Most dot-matrix printers offer different

speeds depending on the quality of print desired.

 Print quality: Determined by the number of pins (the mechanisms that print the dots),
it can vary from 9, 18 or 24pins.

o The best dot-matrix printers (24 pins) can produce near letter-quality type,
although you can still see a difference if you look closely.

 Ink: Dot Matrix Printer use ribbon for ink

Advantages & Disadvantage of Dot-Matrix Printer

Advantages Disadvantages

 Expensive  Slow Speed

 Widely Used  Limited color printing

 Can print on multi-part forms or carbon  Print limited font

copies  Make a lot of noise
 Other language characters can be printed  Poor Quality
 Reliable, durable

II. Daisy Wheel Printer

 These printers are generally used for word-processing in offices which require a few
letters to be sent here and there with very nice quality.
 Similar to a ball-head typewriter, this type of printer has a plastic or metal wheel on
which the shape of each character stands out in relief.
 A hammer presses the wheel against a ribbon, which in turn makes an ink stain in the
shape of the character on the paper.
 Daisy-wheel printers produce letter-quality print but cannot print graphics.
 Daisy-wheel printers tend to be the slowest, printing about 30 character per second.

Advantages & Disadvantage of Daisy Wheel Printer

Advantages

 More reliable than DMP

 Can print different fonts

 Better quality/produce letter-quality

 The fonts of character can be easily changed

Disadvantages

 Slower than DMP

  Can’t print graphics/can print only text

 Noisy

 More expensive than DMP

B. Line Printers
 Contains a chain of characters or pins that print an entire line at one time.
 Line printers print up to 3,000 lines per minute.

Advantages & Disadvantage of Line Printer

Advantages

 Very fast

Disadvantages

 Low quality

 Can only print text/letters

 These are of further two types

 Drum Printer

 Chain Printer

Drum Printer

 This printer is like a drum in shape so it is called drum printer.

 The surface of drum is divided into number of tracks.
 Total tracks are equal to size of paper i.e. for a paper width of 132 characters, drum will
have 132 tracks.
 A character set is embossed on track.
 The different character sets available in the market are 48 character set, 64 and 96
characters set. One rotation of drum prints one line.
 Drum printers are fast in speed and can print 300 to 2000 lines per minute.

Advantages

 Very high speed

Disadvantages
  Very expensive

 Characters fonts cannot be changed

Chain Printer

 In this printer, chain of character sets is used so it is called Chain Printer.

 A standard character set may have 48, 64, or 96 characters.

Advantages Disadvantages

 Character fonts can easily be  Noisy

changed.

 Different languages can be used

with the same printer.
2. Non-impact Printers
 Non-impact printers print the characters without using ribbon.
 These printers print a complete page at a time so they are also called as Page Printers.

Characteristics of Non-impact Printers

 Faster than impact printers.

 They are not noisy.

 High quality.

 Support many fonts and different character size.

 These printers are of two types

A. Laser Printers B. Inkjet Printers

A. Laser Printers
 These are non-impact page printers.
 They use laser lights to produce the dots needed to form the characters to be printed
on a page.
 Can print text and images in high speed and high quality resolution, ranging from 600
to 1200 dpi.
 Uses the same technology as copy machines.
 Laser printer use toner (black or colored powder) instead of liquid inks.
 A laser printer consists of these major components: drum cartridge, rotating mirror,
toner cartridge and roller.
 Laser printers range from about 4 to 20 text pages per minute.

Important characteristics Laser printers:

 Speed: Given in Pages per Minute (PPM) the higher the PPM the more pages they can
print. Most ink-jet printers offer different speeds depending on the quality of print
desired.

 Print quality: Determined by the DPI Dot Per Inch Example 4880 x 2440 DPI (Vertical
and Horizontal DPI)

 Ink: Laser Printers use Toner Cartridges

Advantages & Disadvantage of Line Printer

Advantages

 Very high speed

 Very high quality output/letter quality
 Give good graphics quality
 Printout is not sensitive to water
 Support many fonts and different character
size
 Good for high volume printing

Disadvantages

 Expensive/ than ink jet

 Except for high end machines
 Warm up time needed
 The cost of toner replacement and drum replacement is high
 Cannot be used to produce multiple copies of a document in a single printing.
B. Inkjet Printers
 Inkjet printers are non-impact character printers based on a relatively new technology.
 They print characters by spraying small drops of ink onto paper.
 Color printing is also possible.
 Some models of Inkjet printers can produce multiple copies of printing also.

 A typical ink-jet printer provides a resolution of 600 dots per inch, although some
newer models offer higher resolutions.

Important characteristics Inkjet printers:

 Speed: Given in Pages per Minute (PPM) the higher the PPM the more pages they can
print. Most ink-jet printers offer different speeds depending on the quality of print
desired.

 Print quality: Determined by the DPI Dot Per Inch Example 2440 x 1220 DPI (Vertical
and Horizontal DPI) The higher the DPI the better in terms of print quality.

 Ink: Ink-Jet Printers use Ink Cartridges (hidden cost)

Advantages & Disadvantage of Inkjet Printer

Advantages

 High quality printing/letter & Graphics

 More reliable

 Can print different fonts

 Less Noise

 Reasonably fast

 Easy to Use

 No warm up time

Disadvantages

 Expensive as cost per page is high

 Slow as compared to laser printer

 less durable
  Not good for high volume printing

Other Types of Printers

All-in-One Printer (Multifunction)

 It is a machine that includes several functionalities including

printer, scanner, copier and fax.
 Multifunction printer is very popular in SoHo (small office /
home office) offices.
 It can use either inkjet or laser print method.
 Some multifunction printers also have media card readers,
allowing printing of pictures directly from digital cameras without using a computer.

Advantages & Disadvantage of Inkjet Printer

Advantages

 Low cost - it is often cheaper to buy a multifunction printer than individual components
(fax machine, scanner, printer, copier) separately
 Take up less room

Disadvantages

 If one component is broken, the entire machine has to be replaced

 Failure in any component will affect other functions
 The print quality and speed may be lower than some stand alone components

Thermal Printer

 Is a type of printer that produces a printed image by selectively

heating coated thermo chromic paper, or thermal paper as it is
commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head.
 The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated which then produce an image.

 Thermal printer is an inexpensive printer.

 Thermal printers are widely used in calculators and fax machines.

Photo Printer:

 Photo Printer is a type of printer use for printing photographs.

Dye-Sublimation Printer:

 Is a type of printer which employs a printing process that uses heat to

transfer dye to a medium such as a plastic card, printer paper or poster
paper.

Plotter

 A large device use to print large posters and documents

LCD & LED
 Similar to a laser printer, but uses liquid crystals or light-emitting diodes rather than a
laser to produce an image on the drum.

Types of Printer Cables

 USB :- Standard USB Printer Cable speed is around 12Mbps.

 Parallel – IEEE 1284 Standard Cable :- speed is around

1.5 to 2.77Mbps 

 Serial – RS232 Standard Printer Cable speed is around 57Kbps

Printer Connections
 Network, or commonly Ethernet, connections are commonplace on network laser
printers, though some other types of printers do employ this type of connection.

 Generally, network printers are designed to be shared using a central

file/print server, though you can share them off a workstation in a
“workgroup” environment.  
RJ45

Parallel

 Are the original standard for printers and a lot of basic printers still rely on the parallel
port connection.

 A parallel (also called LPT port) sends and receives data simultaneously, transmitting
data in parallel.

 Parallel uses a DB25 connection on the computer side and an oddly shaped 36 pin
connection on the printer called the centronics port.

 Parallel Port  Centronics

USB, or Universal Serial Bus

 Is a very common connector type for personal printers being sold today. USB is sold as
the next generation of standard ports for computers. USB allows mice, keyboards,
scanners, printers, most peripherals to connect to a computer. It supports up to 12
Mbps transfer rate and is hot swappable.

 USB_A    USB_B

Infrared

 Is not very commonly used.

 An Infrared acceptor allows your devices (laptops, PDAs, Cameras, etc) connect to the
printer and send print commands via infrared signals.

 Serial allows your printer to connect to your computer via the serial port.
Firewire

 Is a high speed connection commonly referred to as IEEE1394, its “standard”.

 Though not specifically mentioned in the preparation outline for the exam, you should
be aware that a printer may connect via Firewire.

 Firewire is a high speed connection typically used for digital video editing or other high
bandwidth requirements.

 6pin Firewire port

 Wireless connection such as Bluetooth is also popular for connecting printers in a

network environment

An HP Jet direct (or Printer Server Box)

 Is a device which allows a non-networkable printer to be networked.

 For example, we have an Epson color inkjet printer in our office which has a standard
parallel port connection on it.

 The Jet Direct box allows the printer to be connected into our network and allows the
printer to be shared off of our file/print server.