[PRINTER AS AN OUTPUT DEVICE]

What is a Printer?
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.
Types of Printers
Since the invention of the printing technology, a variety of technologies have been employed in
computer printers. Broadly printers are categorized as impact and non impact printers. Impact
printers are the type of printers in which a key strikes the paper to make a letter. The
examples of Impact printers are Daisy wheel and Dot matrix printers. While non-impact printers
do not operate by striking a head against a ribbon. Inkjet printers and laser printers are the nonimpact printers. The most popular printers are described.
1. Daisy Wheel Printers
Daisy wheel printers print only characters and symbols and cannot
print graphics. They are generally slow with a printing speed of about
10 to 75 characters per second. By 1980 daisy wheel printers were
the dominant printers for quality printing but since the prices of laser
and inkjet printers have declined and quality of dot matrix printers
has been improved, the daisy wheel printers are
now obsolete.
Working of daisy wheel printers is very similar to
typewriters. A circular printing element (known as daisy wheel, shown in the
below image) is the heart of these printers that contains all text, numeric
characters and symbols mould on each petal on the circumference of the
circle. The printing element rotates rapidly with the help of a servo motor
and pauses to allow the printing hammer to strike the character against the
paper.
2. Dot Matrix Printers
It is a popular computer printer that prints text and graphics on the paper by using tiny dots to
form the desired shapes. It uses an array of metal pins known as printhead to strike an inked
printer ribbon and produce dots on the paper. These
combinations of dots form the desired shape on the paper.
Generally they print with a speed of 50 to 500 characters
per second as per the printing is desired. The quality of print
is determined by the number of pins used (varying from 9 to
24).
It is aprinter that produces characters and illustrations by
striking pins against an ink ribbon to print closely spaced
dots in the appropriate shape. Dot-matrix printers are relatively expensive and do not produce
high-quality output. However, they can print to multi-page forms (that is, carbon copies),
something laser and ink-jet printers cannot do.
Dot-matrix printers vary in two important characteristics: speed: Given in characters per second
(cps),the speed can vary from about 50 to over 500 cps. Most dotmatrix 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 to 24. The best dot-matrix printers (24
pins) can produce near letter-quality type, although you can still see a difference if you look
closely.
In addition to these characteristics, you should also consider the noise factor. Compared to laser
and ink-jet printers, dot-matrix printers are notorious for making a racket.
3. Inket printers
Inkjet printers are most popular printers for home and small scale offices as they have a
reasonable cost and a good quality of printing as well. A typical inkjet printer can print with a

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resolution of more than 300 dpi and some good quality inkjet printers are able to produce full
colored hard copies at 600 dpi.
It is a 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.
In general, the price of ink-jet printers is lower than that of laser printers. However, they are also
considerably slower. Another drawback of ink-jet printers is that they require a special type of ink
that is apt to smudge on inexpensive copier paper.
Because ink-jet printers require smaller mechanical parts than laser printers, they are especially
popular as portable printers. In addition, color ink-jet printers provide an inexpensive way to print
full-color documents.
Laser printer
Laser printer is 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. Because an
entire page is transmitted to a drum before the toner is applied,
laser printers are sometimes called . There are two other types of
page printers that fall under the category of even though they do
not use lasers at all. One uses an array of to expose the drum, and
the other uses Once the drum is charged, however, they both
operate like a real laser printer.
One of the chief characteristics of laser printers is their resolution
-- how many dots per inch (dpi) they lay down. The available
resolutions range from 00 dpi at the low end to 1,200 dpi at the high end. By comparison, offset
printing usually prints at 1,200 or 2,400 dpi. Some laser printers achieve higher resolutions with
special techniques known generally as resolution enhancement.
In addition to the standard monochrome laser printer, which uses a single toner, there also exist
color laser printers that use four toners to print in full color. Color laser printers tend to be about
five to ten times as expensive as their monochrome siblings.
Laser printers produce very high-quality print and are capable of printing an almost unlimited
variety of fonts. Most laser printers come with a basic set of fonts, called or , but you can add
additional fonts in one of two ways:
1. Font Cartridges : Laser printers have slots in which you can insert font cartridges, ROM
boards on which fonts have been recorded. The advantage of font cartridges is that they
use none of the printer's memory.
2. Soft Fonts : All laser printers come with a certain amount of RAM memory, and you can
usually increase the amount of memory by adding memory boards in the printer's
expansion slots. You can then copy fonts from a disk to the printer's RAM. This is called
fonts. A font that has been downloaded is often referred to as a , to distinguish it from the
available on font cartridges. The more RAM a printer has, the more fonts that can be
downloaded at one time.
In addition to text, laser printers are very adept at printing graphics. However, you need
significant amounts of memory in the printer to print high-resolution graphics. To print a full-page
graphic at 00 dpi, for example, you need at least 1 MB (megabyte) of printer RAM. For a 00-dpi
graphic, you need at least 4 MB RAM. Because laser printers are printers, they are much quieter
than dot-matrix or daisy-wheel printers. They are also relatively fast, although not as fast as
some dot-matrix printers. The speed of laser printers ranges from about 4 to 20 pages of text per
minute (ppm). A typical rate of ppm is equivalent to about 40 characters per second (cps).
Plotters

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Pen-based plotters were an alternate printing technology once common in engineering and
architectural firms. Penbased plotters rely on contact with the paper (but
not impact, per se) and special purpose pens that are mechanically run
over the paper to create text and images. Since the pens output
continuous lines, they were able to produce technical drawings of higher
resolution than was achievable with dot-matrix technology. Some
plotters used roll-fed paper, and therefore had minimal restriction on the
size of the output in one dimension. These plotters were capable of
producing quite sizable drawings.