Is a type of nonimpact printer that forms characters and graphics by spraying tiny drops of liquid ink onto a piece of paper?

Inkjet printers are fairly inexpensive. They cost less than a typical black-and-white laser printer, and much less than a color laser printer. In fact, quite a few of the manufacturers sell some of their printers at a loss. Quite often, you can find the printer on sale for less than you would pay for a set of the ink cartridges!

Why would they do this? Because they count on the supplies you purchase to provide their profit. This is very similar to the way the video game business works. The hardware is sold at or below cost. Once you buy a particular brand of hardware, then you must buy the other products that work with that hardware. In other words, you can't buy a printer from Manufacturer A and ink cartridges from Manufacturer B. They will not work together.

Another way that they have reduced costs is by incorporating much of the actual print head into the cartridge itself. The manufacturers believe that since the print head is the part of the printer that is most likely to wear out, replacing it every time you replace the cartridge increases the life of the printer.

The paper you use on an inkjet printer greatly determines the quality of the image. Standard copier paper works, but doesn't provide as crisp and bright an image as paper made for an inkjet printer. There are two main factors that affect image quality:

• Brightness
• Absorption

The brightness of a paper is normally determined by how rough the surface of the paper is. A course or rough paper will scatter light in several directions, whereas a smooth paper will reflect more of the light back in the same direction. This makes the paper appear brighter, which in turn makes any image on the paper appear brighter. You can see this yourself by comparing a photo in a newspaper with a photo in a magazine. The smooth paper of the magazine page reflects light back to your eye much better than the rough texture of the newspaper. Any paper that is listed as being bright is generally a smoother-than-normal paper.

The other key factor in image quality is absorption. When the ink is sprayed onto the paper, it should stay in a tight, symmetrical dot. The ink should not be absorbed too much into the paper. If that happens, the dot will begin to feather. This means that it will spread out in an irregular fashion to cover a slightly larger area than the printer expects it to. The result is an page that looks somewhat fuzzy, particularly at the edges of objects and text.

• 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 cheep.
• 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. 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.

• 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 ass 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.

• Low noise
• Can produce high quality color output.

Disadvantages of Thermal Printers

• Expensive
• Slow Speed
• Required special paper

Related Posts Also Read

Which printer forms characters and graphics on a piece of paper?

Which printer forms the characters and images by spraying small drops of ink on a paper?

What are nonimpact printers?

Which printer sprays ink from the tiny holes?