I ntroduction Summary Special types of printers Commonly used printers and their technologies Printer qualities Printer languages Printer I/O interface Printer classification What is a printer ?

W hat is a Printer?  In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form.

P rinter classification Two primary technologies used for printing Printers Impact Printers Dot-matrix printers, Daisy wheel printers etc. Non-impact Printers Laser printers, Bubble- jet printers etc.

P rinter I/O Interfaces  The most common I/O interface for printers has been the parallel interface with a 36 - pin plug.  New printers and computers are using serial interface, especially Universal Serial Bus or Fire Wire.

P rinter Languages  Printer languages are commands from the computer to the printer to tell the printer how to format the document being printed.  These commands manage font size, graphics, compression of data sent to the printer, color, etc.

P rinter Qualities  Colour  Resolution  Speed  Memory

Dot- matrix printer Daisy wheel printer Ink jet printer Bubble jet printer Thermal printer Laser printer c ommonly used printers and their technologies

D ot matrix printer  Extremely useful when the actual printed content is much more important than the quality of the print.  Commonly used for printing invoices, purchase orders, shipping forms, labels, and other multi-part forms.  Can print through multi-part forms in a single pass, allowing them to produce more pages than even high-speed laser printers.

 Use a set of closely spaced pins and a ribbon to print letters or other characters on a page.  These printers actually impact the page to print a character, much like a typewriter.  Dot-matrix printers vary in terms of speed and the number of pins (9-24) they have.  They can run at a speed anywhere between 50 and 500 CPS (Characters Per Second). D ot matrix printer

D aisy wheel printer  Able to produce letter- high quality text (unlike dot matrix printers, which created fuzzy, low-quality characters).  These printers were slow, couldn't print graphics, and often incredibly loud.

 Simply a metal or plastic disk sliced into thin strips toward the center.  A raised letter or character resided at the outer end of each strip.  To print, the printer would spin the wheel to the correct character, and a hammer would strike it, forcing the character through an inked ribbon and onto the paper. D aisy wheel printer

I nkjet printer  Maintaining excellent quality at an affordable price.  Capable of producing high quality print which almost matches the quality of a laser printer.  Almost all ink-jets offer a color option as standard, in varying degrees of resolution etc.

 Ink-jets printers spray ionized tiny drops of ink onto a page to create an image.  This is achieved by using magnetized plates which direct the ink's path onto the paper in the desired pattern.  A standard ink-jet printer has a resolution of 300 dots per inch. I nkjet printer

B ubble jet printer  The principal difference between bubble-jet printers and ink-jet printers is that  bubble-jet printers use - special heating elements to prepare ink,  ink-jet printers use - piezoelectric crystals to prepare ink.

 Ink bubble forms inside the nozzle and a tiny drop of ink is expelled at high speed.  When the drop hits a paper surface, it forms a round dot of even density and color.  The heating element is switched on and off in response to data from a computer, which processes the information from an image file. B ubble jet printer

 To speed things up, use multiple nozzles for each color of ink and combines all the nozzles into a single print head.  High quality, Speed and Low cost. B ubble jet printer

T hermal printer  A thermal print head melts wax- based ink from the transfer ribbon onto the paper, when cool it’s permanent.  These printers print images as dots, which means that images must be dithered first. As a result, images are not quite photo-realistic, although they are very good.

 Don't require special paper (e.g. in dye transfer printers) and they are faster, quit and economical etc.  Commercial applications – filling stations pumps, point of sales systems and voucher printers etc. T hermal printer

L aser printer  Operate by shining a laser beam to produce an image on a drum.  Then the drum is rolled through a pool, or reservoir, or toner, and the electrically charged portions of the drum pick up ink.  Finally, using a combination of heat and pressure, the ink on the drum is transferred onto the page.

 Laser printers print very fast, and the supply cartridges work a long time.  Color laser printers use the same toner-based printing process as black and white (B/W) laser printers, except that they combine four different toner colors. L aser printer

S pecial types of printers PlottersLabel Printers CD/DVD Printers Multifunctional Printers Versa-laser Printer 3D Printers

P lotters  Large-scale printers those are very accurate at reproducing line drawings.  Commonly used for technical drawings such as engineering drawings or architectural blueprints etc.  The two basic types of plotters  flatbed plotters  drum plotters.

L abel Printer  The smartest way to print labels one at a time.  The printers allow easy installation.  Can get high-quality, professional results every time

C D/DVD Printer  Provide a low cost way to create professional printed CD-R and DVD- R.  Can print directly on the CD or DVD surface.  With high speed and can print full color image.

M ultifunctional Printers  A machine combined top-quality color ink-jet or laser printing with PC faxing, color copying, color scanning and telephoning etc.  All in one, convenient, space-saving machine.

V ersa-Laser TM Printer  Peripheral tool that can transform images or drawings on your computer screen into real items made out of an amazing variety of materials.  Wood, Plastic, Fabric, Paper etc.  Versa-Laser™ is a brand name. (Universal Laser Systems Inc.)

3 D Printers  Creates physical models directly from computer- aided design system (CAD) and other digital data.  The printer is fast, versatile and simple.  Allowing engineers to produce a range of concept models and functional test parts quickly and inexpensively.

S ummary What is a printer ? Printer classification Printer I/O interface Printer languages Printer qualities commonly used printers and their technologies Special types of printers

G roup members  - IIT JANUARY INTAKE –  Basura Ramanayake  Isuru Samarasinghe  Rishikeshan Parasuraman  Udayashangari Sivaji

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