Printers

Lesson 6: Looking at printers

Using Printers
 Printers are considered output devices as they will display what was on your screen once you activate the print command. All applications allow you to print the file you are working on, and offer manual different options you can set for printing the file, landscape versus portrait orientation, paper size, annual feed versus cartridge tray, etc. These options will vary depending on the printer you have installed for your computer.  There are a number of different types of printers available for purchase. The one you choose or use for printing will depend on your needs, preprinted forms may require a dot matrix printer as will printing checks, but regular documents such as letters and budget reports may require laser quality.

Types of Printers

 * Dot Matrix Printer
 * Ink Jet Printer [[image:http://www.wingbar.net/Library/printer-icon.gif width="192" height="160" align="right"]]
 * Bubble Jet Printer
 * Laser Printer
 * Miscellaneous Printers

Dot Matrix Printer
A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print mechanism on a typewriter. However, unlike a typewriter or daisy wheel printer, letters are drawn out of a dot matrix, and thus, varied fonts and arbitrary graphics can be produced. Because the printing involves mechanical pressure, these printers can create carbon copies and carbonless copies

**Ink Jet Printer** An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image ﻿ by propelling variable-sized droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines, that can cost up to thousands of dollars The concept of inkjet printing originated in the 19th century, and the technology was first developed in the early 1950s. Starting in the late 1970s inkjet printers that could reproduce digital images generated by computers were developed, mainly by Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Canon. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, HP, Epson, and Lexmark, a 1991 spin-off from IBM.

**Bubble Jet Printer** A bubble jet printer is 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. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> In a bubble jet printer, tiny resistors create heat, and this heat vaporizes ink to create a bubble. The expansion that creates the bubble causes a droplet to form and eject from the print head. A typical bubble jet print head has 64 or 128 tiny nozzles, and all of them can fire a droplet simultaneously.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 25px;">**Laser Printer** <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics onplain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.