COMP1116

Applications of ICT

Lecture # 10 Output Devices-Printers

Dr. Aftab Akram

Instructor: PhD Computer Science, China
Assistant Professor
Printers (Hardcopy Output Devices)
• Printers are the devices used for hardcopy
output

Types of
Printers

Impact Non Impact

Printers Printers
• Impact Printer • Non Impact Printer
– Impact printers have – Do not have striking
striking mechanism mechanism
– Noisy – Do not make noise
– Inked Ribbon is used as – Ink is in powder, liquid or
Ink Wax form
– Print quality is not very – Print quality is excellent
good
– According to print standard, – Can print Letter Quality
can only print Near Letter (LQ) prints
Quality (NLQ) print
– Use continuous sheets of
– Use separate sheets of
paper with guide holes on
paper
the side to move pages in
the printer
– Low Cost Print – Print cost is high
– Do not produce color prints – Can produce color prints
 Impact Printers
• Following are some famous types of impact
printers
o Dot Matrix Printers
o Line Printers
o Daisy Wheel Printers
 Dot Matrix Printer
• A Dot Matrix Printer has a print head that runs back and forth on
the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon
against the paper
• There are number of pins in the head which simulate a single pixel
• During the process of printing, the print mechanism forces some
pins to come forth by magnetic field while some other leave behind
• The pins then strike to the inked ribbon to create the impression of
pins on the page

A 9-Pin Head Dot Matrix Printer

Sample of
Dot Matrix
Print

The Epson LQ-2090II 24 pin dot

matrix printer. Speed up to 584
CPS. Their up-to 8 million character
ribbon cartridge reduces user
interventions as well as cost per
page. Price on Epson website is
607 $.
 Print Speed
CPM (characters per Minute) • 200 - 1120 CPM (draft)

Graphics Resolution • 72 - 360 DPI

Copies (Original +) •4–9

Printhead life • 200 - 400 million characters

Workload (Duty cycle)

PPM (Pages per month) • 6,000 - 60,000 PPM

Price per Printer • Approximately Rs. 5000 to Rs. 300000

Cost per print • Approx. 30 paisa to 60 paisa

 Advantages of Dot Matrix Printer
• Printing on multi-part stationery
• Printing of carbon copies along with original prints
• Lowest printing costs per page
• As the ink is running out, the printout gradually fades rather
than suddenly stopping partway through a job
• Continuous paper sheet bundle can last for week even in
heaviest workload environment
• They are good, reliable workhorses ideal for use in situations
where printed content is more important than quality
• The ink ribbon also does not easily dry out
 Disadvantages
• Impact printers are usually noisy, to the extent
that sound proof enclosures are used for use
in quiet environments
• They can only print low resolution graphics
• Limited color performance
• Limited quality
• Comparatively low speed
 Line Printer
• Parallel Impact Printer
• Use hammer bank (or print-shuttle) instead of print head
• Print-shuttle has hammers instead of print wires, and these
hammers are arranged in a horizontal row instead in vertical
column
• Prints one row of dots instead of column
• The print mechanism forces by magnetic effect certain
hammers to strike on inked ribbon
Printronix Line Printer
The average lifespan of a line
matrix printer is 7 to 10 years as
compared to only 3 years for
laser printers. Cartridge Ribbons
deliver a cost per page that is
around 1/5th that of laser toner
cartridges. Line Matrix Printers
consume considerably less
energy than laser printers. In
India, this printer cost about IRs.
225, 000/-.
 Print Speed
LPM(Lines Per Minute) • 500 - 2000 LPM (draft)

Graphics Resolution • 60 - 240 DPI

Copies (Original +) • 4–9

Workload (Duty cycle)

PPM (Pages per month) • 60,000 - 600,000 PPM

Price per Printer • Approximately Rs. 0.3M to Rs. 1M

Cost per print • Approx. 30 paisa to 60 paisa

 Daisy Wheel Printer
A Daisy Wheel Printer has a rotating circular print head

The Keys are arranged on the circumference of the wheel

When the command is received from computer to print certain character, the
wheel rotates and brings the key in printing position

At that time a hammer strikes from behind forces impact on the inked ribbon
to create impression of key on paper

Same process is repeated for other characters

Speed of Daisy Wheel Printer is measured in Character Per Second (cps)

A Print Head of Daisy Wheel
Printer
 Non Impact Printers
• Following are the major types commonly used
Non Impact Printers
o Laser Printer
o Ink Jet Printer
o Thermal Printers
 Laser Printer
• A type of printer that utilizes a laser beam to produce an image on a
Photoconductor Drum

Photoconductor or • A drum coated with photoconductive material

Photoreceptor Drum
Charging Corona Wire • Creates positive or negative charges on drum surface
or Charging Drum
• Used to create photostatic image of characters to be printed
Laser Assembly • Discharges drum where falls

Toner • Fine powdered ink stored in a container

Fuser • A pair of heated rollers

 Step-1:
A photosensitive surface (photoconductor)
is uniformly charged with static electricity by
a corona or charging drum
Step-2
The charged photoconductor is exposed to
an optical image through light to discharge it
selectively and forms a latent or
invisible image
Also known as Photostatic Image
Step-3
Development is done by spreading toner
over the surface, which adheres only to the
charged areas, making the latent image
visible

Step-4
An electrostatic field transfers the
developed image from the photosensitive
surface to a sheet of paper
Step-5
The transferred image is fixed permanently
to the paper, by fusing the toner with
pressure and heat
Step-6
The last step is cleaning of all excess toner
and electrostatic charges from the
photoconductor to make it ready for next
cycle
 Print Speed • 4 - 50 PPM (for industrial printers
PPM(Pages Per Minute) up to 1000 PPM)

Graphics Resolution • 300 - 2400 DPI

Copies (Original +) •0

Workload (Duty cycle) • 6,000 - 300,000 PPM (for industrial printers

PPM (Pages per month) up to 18 million PPM)

• Approximately Rs. 12000 to Rs. 0.7M

Price per Printer
(industrial printer costs $1Million)

Cost per print • Approx. Rs. 2 to Rs. 10

 Ink Jet Printer
• A type of printer that works by spraying ionized ink at a sheet of paper
• Inkjet printers feature a print head containing thousands of tiny precision
holes referred to as “nozzles”.
• The nozzles drop or eject microscopic droplets of ink at high speed onto the
paper loaded into the printer.
• Inkjet printers use liquid ink produced either by a colored dye or a liquid that
contains solid pigments in suspension.
• As the print head moves horizontally in the machine, the paper passes
through perpendicular to it.
• As the page passes through, the nozzle in the print head is activated (usually
by heat electrical current depending on the manufacturer) and a small drop of
ink is ejected or sprayed out onto the page.
• This process is performed at high speed with thousands of droplets that form
together to recreate the digital text or image that is being transferred onto the
media.
• To the naked eye, the overall image looks to be solid because the dots are so
tiny.
Inkjet Printer Cross section
 Ink Jet Technologies
Piezoelectric
Bubble Jet
Actuator
Developed by Siemens in 1977
Today used in Cannon and HP Ink
Jet Printer

Uses a Piezoelectric Ceramic

Ink drops were ejected from the

nozzle by the fast growth of an ink
Ink drops are ejected by a pressure vapor bubble on the top surface of
wave created by the mechanical a small heater
motion of the piezoelectric ceramic
 Print Speed
PPM(Pages Per Minute) • 1 - 20 PPM

Graphics Resolution • 300 - 1200 DPI

Copies (Original +) •0

Workload (Duty cycle)

PPM (Pages per month) • 6,000 - 60,000 PPM

Price per Printer • Approximately Rs. 4000 to Rs. 0.3M

Cost per print • Approx. Rs. 10 to Rs. 100

 Thermal Printers

A thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed

image by selectively heating coated thermo chromic paper, or
thermal paper when the paper passes over the thermal print head

The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing

an image

Two-color direct thermal printers are capable of printing both

black and an additional color (often red), by applying heat at two
different temperatures.
 Types of Thermal Printer
• Contain sticks of wax-like ink that are melted and applied to the
Solid Ink
Printer
paper
• The ink then hardens in place

• Color in the paper instead of in the printer

• There are three layers (cyan, magenta and yellow) in the paper
• Each layer is activated by the application of a specific amount
Thermal
of heat
Autochrome
Printers • The print head has a heating element that can vary in
temperature
• The print head passes over the paper three times, providing
the appropriate temperature for each color layer as needed
 Solid Ink Printer

Thermal Printer
 3D Printers
• The process of building that object by "printing" its cross-sections layer by
layer became known as 3-D printing.
• 3D printers use a technology known as Additive Manufacturing, opposite
to CNC (Computer Numerical Control) which is subtractive manufacturing
technology
• Printing process starts by developing of a 3D design using CAD software
• A typical 3D printer is very much like an inkjet printer operated from
a computer. It builds up a 3D model one layer at a time, from the bottom
upward, by repeatedly printing over the same area in a method known
as fused depositional modeling (FDM).
• Instead of using ink, which would never build up to much volume, the
printer deposits layers of molten plastic or powder, and fuses them
together (and to the existing structure) with adhesive or ultraviolet light.
 3-D Printing Process
• Step 1: CAD: Produce a 3-D model using computer-aided design (CAD)
software.
• Step 2: Conversion to STL: Convert the CAD drawing to the STL format. STL,
which is an acronym for standard tessellation language, is a file format
developed for 3D Systems in 1987 for use by its stereo lithography apparatus
(SLA)
• Step 3: Transfer to AM Machine and STL File Manipulation: A user copies the
STL file to the computer that controls the 3-D printer
• Step 4: Machine Setup: Each machine has its own requirements for how to
prepare for a new print job. This includes refilling the polymers, binders and
other consumables the printer will use.
• Step 5: Build: Let the machine do its thing; the build process is mostly
automatic.
• Step 6: Removal: Remove the printed object (or multiple objects in some
cases) from the machine.
• Step 7: Post Processing: Many 3-D printers will require some amount of post-
processing for the printed object.
• Step 8: Application: Make use of the newly printed object or objects
 Plotter
Large or Wide Format Printer

Can print on any size of paper, length and width of paper is unlimited

Most of time are used to print architectural drawings, maps, charts, graphs
etc.

A Plotter works by drawing lines on paper using pens held in a mechanical

arm

Other types of plotter may use mechanism similar to Laser or Inkjet Printer

Two types of Plotter: Flatbed Plotter and Drum Plotter

 Flatbed Plotter
Contains a large rectangular surface

Paper is placed on that surface

The print mechanism moves over the paper by horizontal and vertical guide rails

The horizontal guide rail moves print head right and left

The vertical guide rails moves print head up and down

By this arrangement, the print head is able to move all over the paper placed on
rectangular surface

Limited paper size, maximum printing area is size of flat rectangular surface
Flatbed Plotter
 Drum Plotter
Do not have vertical guide rails

Print head can only move in horizontal direction from left to right

Paper moves inside the plotter as the drum rotates

Paper may have guide holes along its edges to help it moving inside the
plotter

Length of paper is unlimited

However, width of paper depends upon the width of the plotter

Drum Plotter
 Speaker
A sound output device converts electronic signals into
sound waves

Reverse of Microphone, which converts sounds waves

into electrical varying current

Electrical signals can be interpreted as waves-each

wave has frequency and amplitude

The frequency and amplitude of electrical wave will

determine the frequency and amplitude of sound wave
 Components of Sound
Driver(Speaker)
Cone • Made of paper, plastic or metal
• Vibrates to produce sound waves

Suspension • Rim of flexible material that allows the cone to move

(Surround) • Attached to driver metal frame called Basket

Voice Coil • Coil of conducting wires which becomes magnet when current is passed through it
• Placed inside a permanent magnet

• A ring of flexible material

Spider • Coil is attached to basket by spider
• Holds voice coil in position but allows it to move back and forth

Magnet • A permanent magnet with north and south pole

 Working of Speaker
The voice coil creates
When the coil moves, it
an electromagnetic This pushes coil back
pushes and pulls on
field when current is and forth like a piston
speaker cone
provided to it

When the
This electromagnet is
electromagnet’s polar This vibrates air in front
placed inside magnetic
orientation switches, so of speaker creating
field of a permanent
does the direction of sound
magnet
attraction and repulsion

Frequency and
RULE: Similar poles The polarity of
amplitude of sound
repel each other and electromagnet can be
wave is proportional to
opposite poles attract reversed by reversing
frequency and
each other the polarity of current
amplitude of current
 Types of Drivers

Mid
Woofer Tweeter
Range
Designed
Designed Designed to
Frequency
to Cone is to produce
Cone is range
Large in produce made of Small in produce sound
made of between
size low paper or size high between
metal 300Hz to 2
frequency plastic frequency high and
KHz
sound sound low
frequency