Printer (computing)

In computing, a printer is a peripheral

machine which makes a persistent
representation of graphics or text, usually
on paper.[1] While most output is human-
readable, bar code printers are an
example of an expanded use for
printers.[2] Different types of printers
include 3D printers, inkjet printers, laser
printers, and thermal printers.[3]
HP LaserJet 5 printer

The Game Boy Pocket Printer, a thermal printer released as a peripheral for the Nintendo Game Boy

This is an example of a wide-carriage dot matrix printer, designed for 14-inch (360 mm) wide paper, shown with 8.5-by-
14-inch (220 mm × 360 mm) legal paper. Wide carriage printers were often used in the field of businesses, to print
accounting records on 11-by-14-inch (280 mm × 360 mm) tractor-feed paper. They were also called "132-column
printers".
 0:34

A video showing an inkjet printer while printing a page.

History
The first computer printer designed was
a mechanically driven apparatus by
Charles Babbage for his difference
engine in the 19th century; however, his
mechanical printer design was not built
until 2000.[4]

The first patented printing mechanism

for applying a marking medium to a
recording medium or more particularly an
electrostatic inking apparatus and a
method for electrostatically depositing
ink on controlled areas of a receiving
medium, was in 1962 by C. R. Winston,
Teletype Corporation, using continuous
inkjet printing. The ink was a red stamp-
pad ink manufactured by Phillips Process
Company of Rochester, NY under the
name Clear Print. This patent
(US3060429) led to the Teletype Inktronic
Printer product delivered to customers in
late 1966.[5]

The first compact, lightweight digital

printer was the EP-101, invented by
Japanese company Epson and released
in 1968, according to Epson.[6][7][8]
The first commercial printers generally
used mechanisms from electric
typewriters and Teletype machines. The
demand for higher speed led to the
development of new systems specifically
for computer use. In the 1980s there
were daisy wheel systems similar to
typewriters, line printers that produced
similar output but at much higher speed,
and dot-matrix systems that could mix
text and graphics but produced relatively
low-quality output. The plotter was used
for those requiring high-quality line art
like blueprints.

The introduction of the low-cost laser

printer in 1984, with the first HP
LaserJet,[9] and the addition of PostScript
in next year's Apple LaserWriter set off a
revolution in printing known as desktop
publishing.[10] Laser printers using
PostScript mixed text and graphics, like
dot-matrix printers, but at quality levels
formerly available only from commercial
typesetting systems. By 1990, most
simple printing tasks like fliers and
brochures were now created on personal
computers and then laser printed;
expensive offset printing systems were
being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet
of 1988 offered the same advantages as
a laser printer in terms of flexibility, but
produced somewhat lower-quality output
(depending on the paper) from much
less-expensive mechanisms. Inkjet
systems rapidly displaced dot-matrix and
daisy-wheel printers from the market. By
the 2000s, high-quality printers of this
sort had fallen under the $100 price point
and became commonplace.

The rapid improvement of internet email

through the 1990s and into the 2000s
has largely displaced the need for
printing as a means of moving
documents, and a wide variety of reliable
storage systems means that a "physical
backup" is of little benefit today.

Starting around 2010, 3D printing

became an area of intense interest,
allowing the creation of physical objects
with the same sort of effort as an early
laser printer required to produce a
brochure. As of the 2020s, 3D printing
has become a widespread hobby due to
the abundance of cheap 3D printer kits,
with the most common process being
Fused deposition modeling.

Types
Personal printers are mainly designed to
support individual users, and may be
connected to only a single computer.
These printers are designed for low-
volume, short-turnaround print jobs,
requiring minimal setup time to produce
a hard copy of a given document.
However, they are generally slow devices
ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per
minute (ppm), and the cost per page is
relatively high. However, this is offset by
the on-demand convenience. Some
printers can print documents stored on
memory cards or from digital cameras
and scanners.

Networked or shared printers are

"designed for high-volume, high-speed
printing". They are usually shared by
many users on a network and can print at
speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm.[11] The
Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm.
A virtual printer is a piece of computer
software whose user interface and API
resembles that of a printer driver, but
which is not connected with a physical
computer printer. A virtual printer can be
used to create a file which is an image of
the data which would be printed, for
archival purposes or as input to another
program, for example to create a PDF or
to transmit to another system or user.

A barcode printer is a computer

peripheral for printing barcode labels or
tags that can be attached to, or printed
directly on, physical objects. Barcode
printers are commonly used to label
cartons before shipment, or to label retail
items with UPCs or EANs.

A 3D printer is a device for making a

three-dimensional object from a 3D
model or other electronic data source
through additive processes in which
successive layers of material (including
plastics, metals, food, cement, wood, and
other materials) are laid down under
computer control. It is called a printer by
analogy with an inkjet printer which
produces a two-dimensional document
by a similar process of depositing a layer
of ink on paper.
ID Card printers

A card printer is an electronic desktop

printer with single card feeders which
print and personalize plastic cards. In
this respect they differ from, for example,
label printers which have a continuous
supply feed. Card dimensions are usually
85.60 × 53.98 mm, standardized under
ISO/IEC 7810 as ID-1. This format is also
used in EC-cards, telephone cards, credit
cards, driver's licenses and health
insurance cards. This is commonly
known as the bank card format. Card
printers are controlled by corresponding
printer drivers or by means of a specific
programming language. Generally card
printers are designed with laminating,
striping, and punching functions, and use
desktop or web-based software. The
hardware features of a card printer
differentiate a card printer from the more
traditional printers, as ID cards are
usually made of PVC plastic and require
laminating and punching. Different card
printers can accept different card
thickness and dimensions.

The principle is the same for practically

all card printers: the plastic card is
passed through a thermal print head at
the same time as a color ribbon. The
color from the ribbon is transferred onto
the card through the heat given out from
the print head. The standard
performance for card printing is 300 dpi
(300 dots per inch, equivalent to 11.8
dots per mm). There are different printing
processes, which vary in their detail:

Thermal transfer
Mainly used to personalize pre-printed
plastic cards in monochrome. The
color is "transferred" from the
(monochrome) color ribbon onto the
card.
Dye sublimation
This process uses four panels of color
according to the CMYK color ribbon.
The card to be printed passes under
the print head several times each time
with the corresponding ribbon panel.
Each color in turn is diffused
(sublimated) directly onto the card.
Thus it is possible to produce a high
depth of color (up to 16 million
shades) on the card. Afterwards a
transparent overlay (O) also known as
a topcoat (T) is placed over the card to
protect it from mechanical wear and
tear and to render the printed image
UV resistant.
Reverse image technology
The standard for high-security card
applications that use contact and
contactless smart chip cards. The
technology prints images onto the
underside of a special film that fuses
to the surface of a card through heat
and pressure. Since this process
transfers dyes and resins directly onto
a smooth, flexible film, the print-head
never comes in contact with the card
surface itself. As such, card surface
interruptions such as smart chips,
ridges caused by internal RFID
antennae and debris do not affect print
quality. Even printing over the edge is
possible.
Thermal rewrite print process
In contrast to the majority of other card
printers, in the thermal rewrite process
the card is not personalized through
the use of a color ribbon, but by
activating a thermal sensitive foil
within the card itself. These cards can
be repeatedly personalized, erased and
rewritten. The most frequent use of
these are in chip-based student
identity cards, whose validity changes
every semester.
Common printing problems: Many
printing problems are caused by
physical defects in the card material
itself, such as deformation or warping
of the card that is fed into the machine
in the first place. Printing irregularities
can also result from chip or antenna
embedding that alters the thickness of
the plastic and interferes with the
printer's effectiveness. Other issues
are often caused by operator errors,
such as users attempting to feed non-
compatible cards into the card printer,
while other printing defects may result
from environmental abnormalities
such as dirt or contaminants on the
card or in the printer.[12] Reverse
transfer printers are less vulnerable to
common printing problems than direct-
to-card printers, since with these
printers the card does not come into
direct contact with the printhead.
Variations in card printers:
Broadly speaking there are three
main types of card printers,
differing mainly by the method
used to print onto the card. They
are:
Near to Edge. This term
designates the cheapest type
of printing by card printers.
These printers print up to
5 mm from the edge of the
card stock.
Direct to Card, also known as
"Edge to Edge Printing". The
print-head comes in direct
contact with the card. This
printing type is the most
popular nowadays, mostly
due to cost factor. The
majority of identification card
printers today are of this type.
Reverse Transfer, also known
as "High Definition Printing" or
"Over the Edge Printing". The
print-head prints to a transfer
film backwards (hence the
reverse) and then the printed
film is rolled onto the card
with intense heat (hence the
transfer). The term "over the
edge" is due to the fact that
when the printer prints onto
the film it has a "bleed", and
when rolled onto the card the
bleed extends to completely
over the edge of the card,
leaving no border.
Different ID Card Printers use
different encoding techniques to
facilitate disparate business
environments and to support
security initiatives. Known
encoding techniques are:
Contact Smart Card – The
Contact Smart Cards use
RFID technology and require
direct contact to a conductive
plate to register admission or
transfer of information. The
transmission of commands,
data, and card status held
between the two physical
contact points.
Contactless Smart Card –
Contactless Smart Cards
exhibit integrated circuit that
can store and process data
while communicating with the
terminal via Radio Frequency.
Unlike Contact Smart Card,
contact less cards feature
intelligent re-writable
microchip that can be
transcribed through radio
waves.
HiD Proximity – HID's
proximity technology allows
fast, accurate reading while
offering card or key tag read
ranges from 4” to 24” inches
(10 cm to 60.96 cm),
dependent on the type of
proximity reader being used.
Since these cards and key
tags do not require physical
contact with the reader, they
are virtually maintenance and
wear-free.
ISO Magnetic Stripe - A
magnetic stripe card is a type
of card capable of storing
data by modifying the
magnetism of tiny iron-based
magnetic particles on a band
of magnetic material on the
card. The magnetic stripe,
sometimes called swipe card
 or magstripe, is read by
physical contact and swiping
past a magnetic reading
head.
Software

There are basically two categories of

card printer software: desktop-based,
and web-based (online). The biggest
difference between the two is whether or
not a customer has a printer on their
network that is capable of printing
identification cards. If a business already
owns an ID card printer, then a desktop-
based badge maker is probably suitable
for their needs. Typically, large
organizations who have high employee
turnover will have their own printer. A
desktop-based badge maker is also
required if a company needs their IDs
make instantly. An example of this is the
private construction site that has
restricted access. However, if a company
does not already have a local (or
network) printer that has the features
they need, then the web-based option is a
perhaps a more affordable solution. The
web-based solution is good for small
businesses that don't anticipate a lot of
rapid growth, or organizations who either
can't afford a card printer, or don't have
the resources to learn how to set up and
use one. Generally speaking, desktop-
based solutions involve software, a
database (or spreadsheet) and can be
installed on a single computer or
network.

Other options

Alongside the basic function of printing

cards, card printers can also read and
encode magnetic stripes as well as
contact and contact free RFID chip cards
(smart cards). Thus card printers enable
the encoding of plastic cards both
visually and logically. Plastic cards can
also be laminated after printing. Plastic
cards are laminated after printing to
achieve a considerable increase in
durability and a greater degree of
counterfeit prevention. Some card
printers come with an option to print both
sides at the same time, which cuts down
the time taken to print and less margin of
error. In such printers one side of id card
is printed and then the card is flipped in
the flip station and other side is printed.

Applications

Alongside the traditional uses in time

attendance and access control (in
particular with photo personalization),
countless other applications have been
found for plastic cards, e.g. for
personalized customer and members’
cards, for sports ticketing and in local
public transport systems for the
production of season tickets, for the
production of school and college identity
cards as well as for the production of
national ID cards.

Technology
The choice of print technology has a
great effect on the cost of the printer and
cost of operation, speed, quality and
permanence of documents, and noise.
Some printer technologies do not work
with certain types of physical media,
such as carbon paper or transparencies.

A second aspect of printer technology

that is often forgotten is resistance to
alteration: liquid ink, such as from an
inkjet head or fabric ribbon, becomes
absorbed by the paper fibers, so
documents printed with liquid ink are
more difficult to alter than documents
printed with toner or solid inks, which do
not penetrate below the paper surface.

Cheques can be printed with liquid ink or

on special cheque paper with toner
anchorage so that alterations may be
detected.[13] The machine-readable lower
portion of a cheque must be printed
using MICR toner or ink. Banks and other
clearing houses employ automation
equipment that relies on the magnetic
flux from these specially printed
characters to function properly.

Modern print technology

The following printing technologies are

routinely found in modern printers:

Toner-based printers

A laser printer rapidly produces high

quality text and graphics. As with digital
photocopiers and multifunction printers
(MFPs), 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.

Another toner-based printer is the LED

printer which uses an array of LEDs
instead of a laser to cause toner
adhesion to the print drum.

Liquid inkjet printers

Liquid ink cartridge from Hewlett-Packard HP 845C inkjet printer

HP Deskjet, an inkjet printer

Inkjet printers operate by propelling

variably sized droplets of liquid ink onto
almost any sized page. They are the
most common type of computer printer
used by consumers.

Solid ink printers

Solid ink printers, also known as phase-

change ink or hot-melt ink printers, are a
type of thermal transfer printer, graphics
sheet printer or 3D printer . They use
solid sticks, crayons, pearls or granular
ink materials. Common inks are CMYK-
colored ink, similar in consistency to
candle wax, which are melted and fed
into a piezo crystal operated print-head.
A Thermal transfer printhead jets the
liquid ink on a rotating, oil coated drum.
The paper then passes over the print
drum, at which time the image is
immediately transferred, or transfixed, to
the page. Solid ink printers are most
commonly used as color office printers
and are excellent at printing on
transparencies and other non-porous
media. Solid ink is also called phase-
change or hot-melt ink was first used by
Data Products and Howtek, Inc., in
1984.[14] Solid ink printers can produce
excellent results with text and images.
Some solid ink printers have evolved to
print 3D models, for example, Visual
Impact Corporation[15] of Windham, NH
was started by retired Howtek employee,
Richard Helinski whose 3D patents
US4721635 and then US5136515 was
licensed to Sanders Prototype, Inc., later
named Solidscape, Inc. Acquisition and
operating costs are similar to laser
printers. Drawbacks of the technology
include high energy consumption and
long warm-up times from a cold state.
Also, some users complain that the
resulting prints are difficult to write on, as
the wax tends to repel inks from pens,
and are difficult to feed through
automatic document feeders, but these
traits have been significantly reduced in
later models. This type of thermal
transfer printer is only available from one
manufacturer, Xerox, manufactured as
part of their Xerox Phaser office printer
line. Previously, solid ink printers were
manufactured by Tektronix, but Tektronix
sold the printing business to Xerox in
2001.
Dye-sublimation printers

A disassembled dye sublimation cartridge

A dye-sublimation printer (or dye-sub

printer) is a printer that employs a
printing process that uses heat to
transfer dye to a medium such as a
plastic card, paper, or canvas. The
process is usually to lay one color at a
time using a ribbon that has color panels.
Dye-sub printers are intended primarily
for high-quality color applications,
including color photography; and are less
well-suited for text. While once the
province of high-end print shops, dye-
sublimation printers are now increasingly
used as dedicated consumer photo
printers.

Thermal printers

Receipt printer printing a Twitter timeline

Thermal printers work by selectively

heating regions of special heat-sensitive
paper. Monochrome thermal printers are
used in cash registers, ATMs, gasoline
dispensers and some older inexpensive
fax machines. Colors can be achieved
with special papers and different
temperatures and heating rates for
different colors; these colored sheets are
not required in black-and-white output.
One example is Zink (a portmanteau of
"zero ink").

Obsolete and special-purpose

printing technologies

Epson MX-80, a popular model of dot-matrix printer in use for many years
The following technologies are either
obsolete, or limited to special
applications though most were, at one
time, in widespread use.

Impact printers

Impact printers rely on a forcible impact

to transfer ink to the media. The impact
printer uses a print head that either hits
the surface of the ink ribbon, pressing
the ink ribbon against the paper (similar
to the action of a typewriter), or, less
commonly, hits the back of the paper,
pressing the paper against the ink ribbon
(the IBM 1403 for example). All but the
dot matrix printer rely on the use of fully
formed characters, letterforms that
represent each of the characters that the
printer was capable of printing. In
addition, most of these printers were
limited to monochrome, or sometimes
two-color, printing in a single typeface at
one time, although bolding and
underlining of text could be done by
"overstriking", that is, printing two or
more impressions either in the same
character position or slightly offset.
Impact printers varieties include
typewriter-derived printers,
teletypewriter-derived printers,
daisywheel printers, dot matrix printers,
and line printers. Dot-matrix printers
remain in common use [16] in businesses
where multi-part forms are printed. An
overview of impact printing[17] contains a
detailed description of many of the
technologies used.

Typewriter-derived printers

Typeball print element from IBM Selectric-type printer

Several different computer printers were

simply computer-controllable versions of
existing electric typewriters. The Friden
Flexowriter and IBM Selectric-based
printers were the most-common
examples. The Flexowriter printed with a
conventional typebar mechanism while
the Selectric used IBM's well-known "golf
ball" printing mechanism. In either case,
the letter form then struck a ribbon which
was pressed against the paper, printing
one character at a time. The maximum
speed of the Selectric printer (the faster
of the two) was 15.5 characters per
second.

Teletypewriter-derived printers

The common teleprinter could easily be

interfaced with the computer and
became very popular except for those
computers manufactured by IBM. Some
models used a "typebox" that was
positioned, in the X- and Y-axes, by a
mechanism, and the selected letter form
was struck by a hammer. Others used a
type cylinder in a similar way as the
Selectric typewriters used their type ball.
In either case, the letter form then struck
a ribbon to print the letterform. Most
teleprinters operated at ten characters
per second although a few achieved 15
CPS.
Daisy wheel printers

"daisy wheel" print element

Daisy wheel printers operate in much the

same fashion as a typewriter. A hammer
strikes a wheel with petals, the "daisy
wheel", each petal containing a letter
form at its tip. The letter form strikes a
ribbon of ink, depositing the ink on the
page and thus printing a character. By
rotating the daisy wheel, different
characters are selected for printing.
These printers were also referred to as
letter-quality printers because they could
produce text which was as clear and
crisp as a typewriter. The fastest letter-
quality printers printed at 30 characters
per second.

Dot-matrix printers

Sample output from 9-pin dot matrix printer (one character expanded to show detail)

The term dot matrix printer is used for

impact printers that use a matrix of small
pins to transfer ink to the page.[18] The
advantage of dot matrix over other
impact printers is that they can produce
graphical images in addition to text;
however the text is generally of poorer
quality than impact printers that use
letterforms (type).

Dot-matrix printers can be broadly

divided into two major classes:

Ballistic wire printers

Stored energy printers

Dot matrix printers can either be

character-based or line-based (that is, a
single horizontal series of pixels across
the page), referring to the configuration
of the print head.
In the 1970s and '80s, dot matrix printers
were one of the more common types of
printers used for general use, such as for
home and small office use. Such printers
normally had either 9 or 24 pins on the
print head (early 7 pin printers also
existed, which did not print descenders).
There was a period during the early home
computer era when a range of printers
were manufactured under many brands
such as the Commodore VIC-1525 using
the Seikosha Uni-Hammer system. This
used a single solenoid with an oblique
striker that would be actuated 7 times for
each column of 7 vertical pixels while the
head was moving at a constant speed.
The angle of the striker would align the
dots vertically even though the head had
moved one dot spacing in the time. The
vertical dot position was controlled by a
synchronized longitudinally ribbed platen
behind the paper that rotated rapidly with
a rib moving vertically seven dot
spacings in the time it took to print one
pixel column.[19] 24-pin print heads were
able to print at a higher quality and
started to offer additional type styles and
were marketed as Near Letter Quality by
some vendors. Once the price of inkjet
printers dropped to the point where they
were competitive with dot matrix printers,
dot matrix printers began to fall out of
favour for general use.
Some dot matrix printers, such as the
NEC P6300, can be upgraded to print in
color. This is achieved through the use of
a four-color ribbon mounted on a
mechanism (provided in an upgrade kit
that replaces the standard black ribbon
mechanism after installation) that raises
and lowers the ribbons as needed. Color
graphics are generally printed in four
passes at standard resolution, thus
slowing down printing considerably. As a
result, color graphics can take up to four
times longer to print than standard
monochrome graphics, or up to 8-16
times as long at high resolution mode.
Dot matrix printers are still commonly
used in low-cost, low-quality applications
such as cash registers, or in demanding,
very high volume applications like invoice
printing. Impact printing, unlike laser
printing, allows the pressure of the print
head to be applied to a stack of two or
more forms to print multi-part
documents such as sales invoices and
credit card receipts using continuous
stationery with carbonless copy paper. It
also has security advantages as ink
impressed into a paper matrix by force is
harder to erase invisibly. Dot-matrix
printers were being superseded even as
receipt printers after the end of the
twentieth century.
Line printers

Line printers print an entire line of text at

a time. Four principal designs exist.

Print drum from drum printer

Drum printers, where a horizontally

mounted rotating drum carries the
entire character set of the printer
repeated in each printable character
position. The IBM 1132 printer is an
example of a drum printer.[20] Drum
printers are also found in adding
 machines and other numeric printers
(POS), the dimensions are compact as
only a dozen characters need to be
supported.[21]

IBM 1403 line printer

Chain or train printers, where the

character set is arranged multiple
times around a linked chain or a set of
character slugs in a track traveling
horizontally past the print line. The IBM
1403 is perhaps the most popular and
comes in both chain and train
varieties. The band printer is a later
variant where the characters are
embossed on a flexible steel band. The
LP27 from Digital Equipment
Corporation is a band printer.
Bar printers, where the character set is
attached to a solid bar that moves
horizontally along the print line, such
as the IBM 1443.[22]
A fourth design, used mainly on very
early printers such as the IBM 402,
features independent type bars, one
for each printable position. Each bar
contains the character set to be
printed. The bars move vertically to
 position the character to be printed in
front of the print hammer.[23]

In each case, to print a line, precisely

timed hammers strike against the back
of the paper at the exact moment that
the correct character to be printed is
passing in front of the paper. The paper
presses forward against a ribbon which
then presses against the character form
and the impression of the character form
is printed onto the paper. Each system
could have slight timing issues, which
could cause minor misalignment of the
resulting printed characters. For drum or
typebar printers, this appeared as vertical
misalignment, with characters being
printed slightly above or below the rest of
the line. In chain or bar printers, the
misalignment was horizontal, with
printed characters being crowded closer
together or farther apart. This was much
less noticeable to human vision than
vertical misalignment, where characters
seemed to bounce up and down in the
line, so they were considered as higher
quality print.

Comb printers, also called line matrix

printers, represent the fifth major
design. These printers are a hybrid of
dot matrix printing and line printing. In
these printers, a comb of hammers
prints a portion of a row of pixels at
one time, such as every eighth pixel. By
shifting the comb back and forth
slightly, the entire pixel row can be
printed, continuing the example, in just
eight cycles. The paper then advances,
and the next pixel row is printed.
Because far less motion is involved
than in a conventional dot matrix
printer, these printers are very fast
compared to dot matrix printers and
are competitive in speed with formed-
character line printers while also being
able to print dot matrix graphics. The
Printronix P7000 series of line matrix
printers are still manufactured as of
2013.
Line printers are the fastest of all impact
printers and are used for bulk printing in
large computer centres. A line printer can
print at 1100 lines per minute or faster,
frequently printing pages more rapidly
than many current laser printers. On the
other hand, the mechanical components
of line printers operate with tight
tolerances and require regular preventive
maintenance (PM) to produce a top
quality print. They are virtually never used
with personal computers and have now
been replaced by high-speed laser
printers. The legacy of line printers lives
on in many operating systems, which use
the abbreviations "lp", "lpr", or "LPT" to
refer to printers.
Liquid ink electrostatic printers

Liquid ink electrostatic printers use a

chemical coated paper, which is charged
by the print head according to the image
of the document.[24] The paper is passed
near a pool of liquid ink with the opposite
charge. The charged areas of the paper
attract the ink and thus form the image.
This process was developed from the
process of electrostatic copying.[25] Color
reproduction is very accurate, and
because there is no heating the scale
distortion is less than ±0.1%. (All laser
printers have an accuracy of ±1%.)
Worldwide, most survey offices used this
printer before color inkjet plotters
become popular. Liquid ink electrostatic
printers were mostly available in 36 to 54
inches (910 to 1,370 mm) width and also
6 color printing. These were also used to
print large billboards. It was first
introduced by Versatec, which was later
bought by Xerox. 3M also used to make
these printers.[26]

Plotters
A Calcomp 565 drum plotter

Pen-based plotters were an alternate

printing technology once common in
engineering and architectural firms. Pen-
based 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.[27] Some plotters used
roll-fed paper, and therefore had a
minimal restriction on the size of the
output in one dimension. These plotters
were capable of producing quite sizable
drawings.

Other printers

A number of other sorts of printers are

important for historical reasons, or for
special purpose uses.

Digital minilab (photographic paper)

Electrolytic printers
Spark printer
Barcode printer multiple technologies,
including: thermal printing, inkjet
printing, and laser printing barcodes
Billboard / sign paint spray printers
 Laser etching (product packaging)
industrial printers
Microsphere (special paper)

Attributes

Connectivity

Printers can be connected to computers

in many ways: directly by a dedicated
data cable such as the USB, through a
short-range radio like Bluetooth, a local
area network using cables (such as the
Ethernet) or radio (such as WiFi), or on a
standalone basis without a computer,
using a memory card or other portable
data storage device.
More than half of all printers sold at U.S.
retail in 2010 were wireless-capable, but
nearly three-quarters of consumers who
have access to those printers weren't
taking advantage of the increased
access to print from multiple devices
according to the new Wireless Printing
Study.

Printer control languages

Most printers other than line printers

accept control characters or unique
character sequences to control various
printer functions. These may range from
shifting from lower to upper case or from
black to red ribbon on typewriter printers
to switching fonts and changing
character sizes and colors on raster
printers. Early printer controls were not
standardized, with each manufacturer's
equipment having its own set. The IBM
Personal Printer Data Stream (PPDS)
became a commonly used command set
for dot-matrix printers.

Today, most printers accept one or more

page description languages (PDLs).
Laser printers with greater processing
power frequently offer support for
variants of Hewlett-Packard's Printer
Command Language (PCL), PostScript or
XML Paper Specification. Most inkjet
devices support manufacturer
proprietary PDLs such as ESC/P. The
diversity in mobile platforms have led to
various standardization efforts around
device PDLs such as the Printer Working
Group (PWG's) PWG Raster.

Printing speed

The speed of early printers was

measured in units of characters per
minute (cpm) for character printers, or
lines per minute (lpm) for line printers.
Modern printers are measured in pages
per minute (ppm). These measures are
used primarily as a marketing tool, and
are not as well standardised as toner
yields. Usually pages per minute refers to
sparse monochrome office documents,
rather than dense pictures which usually
print much more slowly, especially color
images. Speeds in ppm usually apply to
A4 paper in most countries in the world,
and letter paper size, about 6% shorter, in
North America.

Printing mode

The data received by a printer may be:

A string of characters
A bitmapped image
A vector image
A computer program written in a page
description language, such as PCL or
 PostScript

Some printers can process all four types

of data, others not.

Character printers, such as daisy wheel

printers, can handle only plain text data
or rather simple point plots.
Pen plotters typically process vector
images. Inkjet based plotters can
adequately reproduce all four.
Modern printing technology, such as
laser printers and inkjet printers, can
adequately reproduce all four. This is
especially true of printers equipped
with support for PCL or PostScript,
 which includes the vast majority of
printers produced today.

Today it is possible to print everything

(even plain text) by sending ready
bitmapped images to the printer. This
allows better control over formatting,
especially among machines from
different vendors. Many printer drivers do
not use the text mode at all, even if the
printer is capable of it.[6]

Monochrome, color and photo

printers

A monochrome printer can only produce

monochrome images, with only shades
of a single color. Most printers can
produce only two colors, black (ink) and
white (no ink). With half-tonning
techniques, however, such a printer can
produce acceptable grey-scale images
too

A color printer can produce images of

multiple colors. A photo printer is a color
printer that can produce images that
mimic the color range (gamut) and
resolution of prints made from
photographic film.

Page yield

The page yield is number of pages that

can be printed from a toner cartridge or
ink cartridge—before the cartridge needs
to be refilled or replaced. The actual
number of pages yielded by a specific
cartridge depends on a number of
factors.[28]

For a fair comparison, many laser printer

manufacturers use the ISO/IEC 19752
process to measure the toner cartridge
yield.[29][30]

Economics

In order to fairly compare operating

expenses of printers with a relatively
small ink cartridge to printers with a
larger, more expensive toner cartridge
that typically holds more toner and so
prints more pages before the cartridge
needs to be replaced, many people prefer
to estimate operating expenses in terms
of cost per page (CPP).[29]

Retailers often apply the "razor and

blades" model: a company may sell a
printer at cost and make profits on the
ink cartridge, paper, or some other
replacement part. This has caused legal
disputes regarding the right of
companies other than the printer
manufacturer to sell compatible ink
cartridges. To protect their business
model, several manufacturers invest
heavily in developing new cartridge
technology and patenting it.

Other manufacturers, in reaction to the

challenges from using this business
model, choose to make more money on
printers and less on ink, promoting the
latter through their advertising
campaigns. Finally, this generates two
clearly different proposals: "cheap
printer – expensive ink" or "expensive
printer – cheap ink". Ultimately, the
consumer decision depends on their
reference interest rate or their time
preference. From an economics
viewpoint, there is a clear trade-off
between cost per copy and cost of the
printer.

Printer steganography

An illustration showing small yellow tracking dots on white paper, generated by a color laser printer

Printer steganography is a type of

steganography – "hiding data within
data"[31] – produced by color printers,
including Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, HP,
IBM, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lanier,
Lexmark, Ricoh, Toshiba and Xerox[32]
brand color laser printers, where tiny
yellow dots are added to each page. The
dots are barely visible and contain
encoded printer serial numbers, as well
as date and time stamps.

See also
Campus card
Cardboard modeling
Dye-sublimation printer
History of printing
Label printer
List of printer companies
Print (command)
Printer driver
 Print screen
Print server
Printer friendly (also known as a
printable version)
Printer point
Printer (publishing)
Printmaking
Smart card
Typewriter ribbon
3D printing

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External links
Media related to Printers at
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