Printer:

A device that prints text or illustrations on paper. There are many different types of printers. In terms of the technology utilized, printers fall into the following categories:

Impact Printers:
Refers to a class of printers that work by banging a head or needle against an ink ribbon to make a mark on the paper. This includes dot-matrix printers, daisy-wheel printers, and line printers. The distinction is important because impact printers tend to be considerably noisier than nonimpact printers but are useful for multipart forms such as invoices.

Daisy-wheel Printer:
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.

Dot-Matrix Printer:
Creates characters by striking pins against an ink ribbon. Each pin makes a dot, and combinations of dots form characters and illustrations.

Chain Printer:
Print characters are contained in a chain, which is moved continuously at a rapid rate by two geared pulleys. Circuitry within the printer senses when the correct character appears at the desired print position on the page. At that point, a hammer strikes the page. This action presses the paper against a ribbon and against the character located at that position. The result leaves an impression of the character. As the chain continues to move transversely across the page, additional characters are printed as they reach the position required by the commands of the computer. When the requirements of the printed line are fulfilled, the printer carriage control moves the page to the next line position.

Drum Printer:
The principal of the drum printer is very similar to that of the chain printer. All the characters in the specified character set are engraved along circumference of the drum and if 132 print positions are available, this is repeated for each column. Character printers and line printers are called impact printers because they use electromechanical mechanism, which causes the character shape to strike against the paper and leave an image of the character on the paper.

Nonimpact Printers:
Nonimpact printers do not make contact with paper or ribbon during printers printing. They use several techniques for printing, such as xerographic, electrostatic, electrosensitive, electrothermal, ink jet, and laser. Nonimpact printers are the fastest of printers with speeds approximating 20,000 lines of print per minute. They are also much quieter than impact printers. Some of the disadvantages are that they produce one copy at a time, sometimes require specially treated paper stock, and the printed output may blur. OR (A type of printer that does not operate by striking a head against a ribbon. Examples of

nonimpact printers includes laser and inkjet printers. The term nonimpact is important primarily in that it distinguishes quiet printers from noisy (impact) printers. )

Thermal Printer:
Thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermochromic 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, producing an image. Two-color direct thermal printers can print both black and an additional color (often red) by applying heat at two different temperatures. Used in atm

Inkjet Printer:
A type of printer that works by spraying ionized ink at a sheet of paper. Magnetized plates in the ink's path direct the ink onto the paper in the desired shapes. Ink-jet printers are capable of producing high quality print approaching that produced by laser printers. A typical ink-jet printer provides a resolution of 300 dots per inch, although some newer models offer higher resolutions.

Bubble jet Printers:

A type of ink-jet printer developed by Canon. The principal difference between bubble-jet printers and other ink-jet printers is that bubble-jet printers use special heating elements to prepare the ink whereas ink-jet printers uses piezoelectric crystals.

Laser Printers:
A type of printer that utilizes a laser beam to produce an image on a drum. The light of the laser alters the electrical charge on the drum wherever it hits. The drum is then rolled through a reservoir of toner, which is picked up by the charged portions of the drum. Finally, the toner is transferred to the paper through a combination of heat and pressure. This is also the way copy machines work.