Two Types of Printers
Computer printers can be categorized in a variety of different ways, but the loosest categorization splits most printers on the market into two groups: impact and non-impact. Impact printers work by way of print heads making physical contact with the paper, as with dot-matrix, daisy wheel and line printers. Print heads in non-impact printers, like thermal, ink-jet and laser printers, do not make physical contact with the paper.
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Dot-Matrix Printers
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Dot-matrix printers used tiny pins that struck the ink ribbon to create text and graphics made up of tiny dots. The text printed on dot-matrix printers was usually fuzzy. Since the entire head of the dot-matrix printer moved back and forth with each line, much like a typewriter, they were slow to print and often very noisy.
Daisy Wheel Printers
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Daisy wheel printers had characters mounted on strips of metal formed into a wheel, which rotated to the correct character and pushed that strip through the ink ribbon onto the paper. This type of impact printer could print at a higher resolution than dot-matrix printers, but as with all impact printers, daisy wheel printers were very noisy.
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Thermal Printers
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Thermal printers are non-impact printers that require the use of special thermal paper onto which heated pins are pressed. Thermal transfer printers use a heated ribbon to establish the same effect. The areas of the paper heated by the pins turn black to display text and images. The paper remains sensitive to heat, light and water, which causes a deterioration of images and text over time. Thermal printers are still commonly used in ATMs and as point-of-sale printers, as well as in older-model fax machines.
Laser Printers
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Laser printers work by using a low-level laser beam and powdered ink to produce text and images in a dot-matrix pattern. Being non-impact, they are much quieter than dot-matrix and other impact printers, and print at a higher speed of approximately four pages per minute.
Ink-Jet Printers
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Another type of non-impact printer, ink-jet printers produce text and images at a very high resolution by firing fine jets of ink onto paper. Printing with an ink-jet is economically efficient and produces high-quality images and text documents. Ink-jet and other non-impact printers have largely come to replace older impact models in popularity since they are much quieter and faster than dot-matrix or daisy wheel printers.
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References
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