Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

PRINTER

• Impact and Non Impacts

◦ Impact Printers
▪ Impact printers, use impact to create an image on the output media.
▪ All impact printers strike a hammer of some kind against an inked ribbon to squeeze ink from the
ribbon onto the paper.
▪ Some common impact type printers are Daisy-Wheel Printer, Dot-Matrix Printer, and Chain
Printer, Drum Printer etc.
▪ These printers are very low-priced and economical to operate compared to the printers using
other technologies.
▪ Advantages
• Impact printer's design and functions are relatively straightforward and easy-to-understand
compared to a non-impact printer.
• These printers generate image by striking the output media, most impact printers can output
on any media, where the ink can be used to print and the media can be fed into the printer.
• The impact printers are that they can be used to print multiple carbon copies. Because the
Impact printers strike the media to create an impression, they can print not just through a
ribbon but also through several sheets of paper and carbon paper to print multiple carbon
copies in a single pass.
• For a number of business applications where exact carbon copies are required, impact
printers are the only available option.
▪ Disadvantages
• The hammer striking against the ribbon and paper which allows multiple copies to be made
also generates noise.
• These impact printers produce too much noise. Some high priced printer use good quality
shock and sound absorbent materials to reduce this noise to a whisper level.
◦ Non Impact Printers
▪ Non-Impact printers do not strike any ribbon or paper to produce the image, instead they use ink
spraying, electrostatic magnetization or heat process to produce the required image on the
paper or on any other output media.
▪ The common non-impact technologies are the Ink-jet, thermal, Laser, thermal wax-transfer and
thermal dye-diffusion.
▪ Advantages
• Soundless operation and very high quality output of these printers are making them very
popular.
▪ Disadvantages
• One disadvantage with these printers is they cannot be used to print carbon copies or
multiple copies in a single pass.
• Another disadvantage is their higher running cost, i.e. per page printing cost.

1 Computer Peripherals & Troubleshooting [P]

Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

• Printers –IMPACT TYPE PRINTERS

◦ Daisy Wheel Printer
▪ Daisy-Wheels (or Petal-Wheels) were one of the first impact type printers used with the
computer.

▪ They were initially used with dedicated word processors systems, because of their very high
quality outputs.
▪ These are fully formed character type printers, all the characters that these printers are capable
of printing, are made available with the printer on a wheel like structure.
▪ Each spoke or the petal of the Daisy-Wheel contains one letter or symbol.
▪ When a character is to be printed the wheel spins on its center to bring that character at the
correct printing position under the small hammer.
▪ Once the character reaches correct position, it is struck by the hammer activated by a solenoid.
This makes the character on the petal to press through an inked ribbon and strike the paper,
leaving an image of the character on the paper.
▪ One can change these wheels to print different type of characters or to change the language to
be printed, as these wheels are available in a wide range of letter style, size and language.
◦ Drum Printer
▪ Drum printers are another variation of the fully formed character type impact printers.

▪ Here again, as the name suggests, on these printers a metal drum- with all the printable
characters on its periphery- is used.

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Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

▪ When a character is to be printed at a particular position, the drum is rotated until the desired
character comes at the correct position.
▪ Next, a hammer strikes the paper against the inked ribbon and the character on the drum. This
makes the character's image to appear on the paper.
▪ This printer allows the entire line to be printed at times, which give it the name of line printer.
▪ This high speed rotation and printing gives a distinctive uneven look (i.e. base of all the letters
will not be properly aligned) to the output produced by the drum printers.
◦ Dot Matrix Printers
▪ Dot matrix printing,sometimes called impact matrix printing, is a computer printing process in
which ink is applied to a surface using a relatively low-resolution dot matrix for layout.

▪ Dot matrix printers typically use a print head that moves back and forth or in an up-and-down
motion on the page and prints by impact, striking on ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper,
much like the print mechanism on a typewriter or line printer. However, a dot matrix printer is
able to print arbitrary patterns and not just specific characters.

▪ The perceived quality of dot matrix printers depends on the vertical and horizontal resolution
and the ability of the printer to overlap adjacent dots. 9-pin and 24-pin are common; this
specifies the number of pins in a specific vertically aligned space. With 24-pin printers, the
horizontal movement can slightly overlap dots, producing visually superior output (near letter
quality or NLQ), usually at the cost of speed.

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Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

▪ Dot matrix printing uses a print head that moves 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.
▪ Each dot is produced by a tiny metal rod, also called a "wire" or "pin", which is driven forward by
the power of a tiny electromagnet or solenoid, either directly or through small levers.
• Printers – NON-IMPACT TYPE PRINTERS
◦ Thermal printers
▪ Thermal printers use heat to produce the image on printing media.

▪ These printers require special heat sensitive paper to produce image. Thermal printers use
heating elements on its print head, these elements are heated by passing current through them
and then they are pressed against the heat sensitive paper.
▪ When the heat is applied to the heat sensitive paper, the paper changes color. Using this process
the required image can be drawn as a dot-matrix image by selectively applying the heated print
head pins to the paper.
▪ The heat sensitive paper used with the thermal printer will not retain the printed image for
longer than six months to one year, because the heat of the atmosphere will slowly change the
color of paper.
◦ Ink jet Printer

▪ Parts of a typical ink jet printer include:

• Print head assembly
◦ Print head

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Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

▪ The core of an ink jet printer, the print head contains a series of nozzles that are used
to spray drops of ink.
• Ink cartridges
◦ Depending on the manufacturer and model of the printer, ink cartridges come in various
combinations, such as separate black and color cartridges, color and black in a single
cartridge or even a cartridge for each ink color.
◦ The cartridges of some ink jet printers include the print head itself
• Print head stepper motor
◦ A stepper motor moves the print head assembly (print head and ink cartridges) back and
forth across the paper.
• Belt
◦ A belt is used to attach the print head assembly to the stepper motor.
• Stabilizer bar
◦ The print head assembly uses a stabilizer bar to ensure that movement is precise and
controlled.
• Paper feed assembly
◦ Paper tray/feeder
▪ Most ink jet printers have a tray that you load the paper into. Some printers dispense
with the standard tray for a feeder instead. The feeder typically snaps open at an
angle on the back of the printer, allowing you to place paper in it.
• Rollers
◦ A set of rollers pull the paper in from the tray or feeder and advance the paper when the
print head assembly is ready for another pass.
• Paper feed stepper motor
◦ This stepper motor powers the rollers to move the paper in the exact increment needed
to ensure a continuous image is printed.
• Power supply
◦ While earlier printers often had an external transformer, most printers sold today use a
standard power supply that is incorporated into the printer itself.
• Control circuitry
◦ A small but sophisticated amount of circuitry is built into the printer to control all the
mechanical aspects of operation, as well as decode the information sent to the printer
from the computer.
• Interface port(s)
◦ The parallel port is still used by many printers, but most newer printers use the USB port.
A few printers connect using a serial port or small computer system interface (SCSI) port.

5 Computer Peripherals & Troubleshooting [P]

Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

▪ Working principle :Ink Jet Printer

• Ink Jet printers are bit image Non-Impact type of printers.

• These printers produce character shape and images by spraying ink from tiny nozzles onto
the paper.
• This process places pattern of dots on the paper to generate the required image.
• Ink is directly released to the paper using a jet of ink.
• The jet could be a continuous stream or could be pulsing type where the Ink Jet is made of
stream of small drops.
• The printing image of Ink Jet is looks much smoother then the images generate using the
Dot-Matrix printer.
• Advantages
◦ These printers are lightweight and small size.
◦ They produce very good print quality for a low price.
◦ Due to Non-Impact design they are not produce much noise like impact printers.
• Disadvantage
◦ The ink in the nozzle can dry, if proper care is not taken, which makes the printing very
difficult.
◦ Ink Jet printers require periodic maintenance because they use liquid ink.
◦ Ink Jet printers require special paper with controlled absorbency.
◦ If the paper is too glossy, the wet ink may spread over the paper.
◦ Laser Printer Printer
▪ PARTS OF A LASER PRINTER
• Control circuit
• Coronas
• Power supply
• Toner unit
• Laser or Scanner Unit
• Fuser Unit

6 Computer Peripherals & Troubleshooting [P]

Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

▪ Laser Scanner Unit

• Laser diode + Stationary mirror + a drum.
• The property of normal light is that the beams are scattered in every direction whereas laser
beam are parallel beam of light with high intensity.
• This section consists of diodes & mirrors. The laser beam is produced by the laser Diode.
• These are given to a rotating scanning mirror.
• This rotating beam is given to the rotating drum. It is a metallic drum made of Aluminum.
▪ Coronas
• It is a metallic container with a thin metallic wire, which has high melting point, One end of
this wire is connected to an electrode and the other end is terminator.
• A high voltage of 1000V is applied to this electrode.
• Two different coronas are used in Laser printers.
◦ They are Charger & Transfer.
◦ The charger corona is placed above the drum and it charges the drum.
◦ The transfer corona is on the paper path to charge the paper.
▪ Toner and Drum Assembly
• The toner is a powder, which is a mixture of carbon, iron and plastic.
• This toner is placed in a separate container with an outlet, which comes in contact with the
drum.
▪ Paper Transport Mechanism
• This has a tray, which can hold around 200 sheets.
• A paper pickup roller and a paper feed roller, These are used to feed the paper into the
printer.
▪ Fuser Assembly
• Its function is to melt the plastic in the toner and press the image into the paper surface.
• This assembly consists of a pressure roller and a heating lamp to heat the toner around 200
degree Celsius.

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Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

▪ Paper feed assembly

• Paper tray/feeder
◦ Most ink jet printers have a tray that you load the paper into.
◦ The feeder typically snaps open at an angle on the back of the printer, allowing you to
place paper in it.
◦ Feeders generally do not hold as much paper as a traditional paper tray.
• Rollers
◦ A set of rollers pull the paper in from the tray or feeder and advance the paper when the
print head assembly is ready for another pass.
▪ Paper feed stepper motor
• This stepper motor powers the rollers to move the paper in the exact increment needed to
ensure a continuous image is printed.
▪ Power supply
• While earlier printers often had an external transformer, most printers sold today use a
standard power supply that is incorporated into the printer itself.
▪ Control circuitry
• A small but sophisticated amount of circuitry is built into the printer to control all the
mechanical aspects of operation, as well as decode the information sent to the printer from
the computer.
▪ Interface port
• The parallel port is still used by many printers, but most newer printers use the USB port. A
few printers connect using a serial port or small computer system interface (SCSI) port.
• Working of Laser Printer
▪ Laser printing is a process which typically involves seven steps:
▪ Raster Image Processing
• The processor inside the printer converts the data to be printed from whatever format, into a
bitmap of the page to be printed - this is then stored in raster image memory.
▪ Charging
• An electrostatic charge is then projected onto a revolving photosensitive drum inside the
printer.

▪ Writing

8 Computer Peripherals & Troubleshooting [P]

Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

• A laser beam is directed at a rotating polygonal mirror, which redirects the beam onto the
photosensitive drum.

• The rasterised data in memory is now read, and used to control whether the laser is on or
off, as the beam sweeps across the drum - where the laser beam strikes the drum the charge
is reversed, creating an electrical image on the surface.
▪ Developing
• The surface of the drum is then exposed to negatively charged particles of toner, which are
attracted to the areas where the laser wrote the latent electrical image. The toner will be
repelled by the negative charge on areas of the drum where the laser beam did not strike,
and hence remove the charge.
▪ Transferring
• The drum is now rolled over paper, transferring the image from the drum to the paper (to aid
in this process there is a positively charged roller behind the paper, which pulls the toner off
the drum and onto the paper).
▪ Fusing
• The paper is then passed through a fuser, where rollers provide heat and pressure to bond
the toner to the paper.
▪ Cleaning
• An electrically uncharged blade and a discharge lamp remove any toner and all the charge
remaining on the drum (this will all happen in one revolution of the drum).

9 Computer Peripherals & Troubleshooting [P]

Practical: To demonstrate of Printer

Exercise
1. Draw figure of Daisy-Wheel Printers.
2. Draw figure of Laser Printers.

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