According to the working method, they are commonly divided into dot matrix printers, inkjet printers, and laser printers.

1. Dot matrix printer

Dot matrix printer has medium resolution and printing speed, and cheap consumables. It also has high-speed line skipping, multiple copy printing, wide-format printing, It has features such as easy maintenance, but its low print quality and loud working noise also make it unable to meet the needs of high-quality, high-speed commercial printing. It is often used in daily office and transaction processing to print reports, invoices, etc.

Dot matrix printer uses 24 pins in the print head to hit the carbon paper to form fonts. During use, users can choose multi-part paper according to their needs. Generally, the commonly used multi-part paper has 2 parts. , 3-part, 4-part paper, and 6-part printer paper is also used. Only dot matrix printers can quickly complete multi-joint paper printing at one time. Inkjet printers and laser printers cannot print multi-joint paper.

2. Inkjet printer

Inkjet printer has the advantages of good printing effect and lower price. Inkjet printer also has more flexible paper processing capabilities. In the choice of printing media, inkjet printers also have certain advantages: they can print not only ordinary media such as envelopes and letter paper, but also various special media such as film, photo paper, CD covers, roll paper, and T-shirt transfer paper.

The principle of inkjet printing is to use a piezoelectric drive device to apply a fixed pressure to the ink in the nozzle to make it spray continuously. For recording, the vibration signal of the oscillator is used to excite the jet to generate ink droplets, and the size and spacing of the ink droplets are controlled.

The printed information from the character generator and analog modulator controls the charge on the control telegram to form charged and uncharged ink droplets, and then the deflection electrode changes the flight direction of the ink droplets. , making the ink droplets to be printed fly onto the paper to generate character/graphic records.

3. Laser printers

are divided into black and white and color, which provide us with higher quality, faster and lower cost printing methods. Its printing principle is to use a raster image processor to generate a bitmap of the page to be printed, and then convert it into an electrical signal and a series of pulses sent to the laser transmitter. Under the control of this series of pulses, the laser is regularly release.

When the laser is emitted, a dot is produced. When the laser is not emitted, it is blank, thus printing a line of dots on the receiver. The receiver then rotates a small fixed distance and continues repeating the above operation. As the paper passes over the photosensitive drum, the colorant on the drum is transferred to the paper, creating a bitmap of the page.

Extended information

Printer consumables

1. Dot matrix printer - ribbon

Dot matrix printer ribbon is divided into wide and wide narrowband. Some ribbons can be replaced individually, and some ribbons must be replaced together with the ribbon holder. You can replace ribbons of different colors as needed;

2. Laser printer - toner, toner cartridge

The toner and toner cartridge of some laser printers can be separated. After use, you can easily refill the toner and then continue to use it until the toner cartridge is aged and replaced; some laser printer toner and toner cartridges are integrated, and after the toner is used up, the toner cartridge must be discarded, causing a certain amount of waste. The cost of toner cartridges accounts for a large part of the total machine cost.

3. Inkjet printer - ink, integrated ink cartridge

Inkjet printer, depending on the printing color, has 4 colors, 5 colors, or 6 colors, etc. Generally, printer ink can be replaced separately for one color of ink, unlike early inkjet printers. As long as one color of ink is used up, it needs to be replaced with the remaining colors.

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