Printers Explained - Laser, Inkjet, Thermal, & Dot Matrix

hello everyone in this article we're going to talk about different types of printers now printers allow the ability to print copies of documents or photos onto paper from a computer now there are several different types of printers but the most common types that are used in homes and businesses are inkjet and laser printers and there are also a couple of less common printers such as thermal printers and dot matrix printers which we'll talk about later so let's first talk about inkjet printers now inkjet printers are the most common printers that are used in homes they are affordable and they produce photo quality results and they are enough to suit the needs of a typical home user now an inkjet printer works by the printhead moving back and forth across the paper during printing and during this process the printhead places ink on the paper in very tiny dots in fact these dots are so tiny that they are smaller in diameter than a human hair and as these dots are precisely placed they form to create an image on paper now to explain how the ink is placed on paper here we have an example of an ink cartridge with a built in printhead so inside we have the ink a heating element and a nozzle so what happens is that the heating element receives a charge of electricity and it heats up then as it heats up it forms a bubble in the ink then as the bubble expands it squeezes out drops of ink on the printhead nozzle and on to the paper then the cycle is repeated until the print job is done now this particular type of inkjet technology is called thermal bubble which is used in HP and Canon printers inkjet printers use liquid ink in cartridges now typically lower-end inkjet printers come with two cartridges one for black and the other one for color but higher-end ink Jets come with four ink cartridges such as one for black cyan magenta and a yellow so now we're going to talk about laser printers now laser printers come in different sizes from smaller personal ones to larger ones for businesses laser printers provide the highest quality print when printing text and simple graphics and they are also more expensive than inkjet printers now a laser printer basically works by first placing an electric charge on a rotating drum then a laser discharges a lower electrical charge on the drum so basically the laser draws the image that is going to be printed on the drum itself then the drum is coated with a fine black powder known as toner and as the drum is being coded the toner only clings to the areas where the laser has drawn then as the paper goes through the printer the toner is placed on the paper and the result is a high quality print that is second to none and another type of printer is called a thermal printer now thermal printers print by using heat thermal printers use special print paper called thermal paper and on this thermal paper is wax based ink and when heat is applied to this ink it turns black so in a thermal printer the only thing the printhead does is apply heat to the areas where ink should be printed then when the ink is cold it becomes permanent and because of this technology thermal printers are very quiet thermal printers are commonly used for printing labels and barcodes and lastly there's dot matrix printers now dot matrix printers are almost non-existent today they are in old technology that produced mediocre print quality especially when compared to laser or inkjet printers and they are also very noisy now dot matrix printers are impact printers the printhead an adopt matrix printer moves across the paper and as it moves the pins on the printhead strike against a cloth ink ribbon which then comes in direct contact with the paper producing each character in the form of dots but despite being an outdated technology dot matrix printers can print multi copy documents such as carbon copies they are also very durable and they last a long time