printer types
when looking at printers there is more than one type. There are three main types of printers that vary greatly in how they they print their characters and images. the first type of printer is a laser printer which prints using electrophotographic technology, which means a laser is used to mark out images on a roller which is rolled on to the paper as dry ink so if wet will not run.
The 2nd type of printer is called an ink jet printer, the most common household printer. these printers use electrostatic spray technology, this means it will spray the paper with ink from ink cartridges, through small or short nozzles nether touching the page being printed.
The 3rd printer type is called a Dot Matrix printer which uses impact technology meaning it uses an ink ribbon or tape which inputs characters and words on the paper.
colour wise?
a printer only uses 4 colours as that is all it needs to mix together to create the others that it is needed for words or an image etc. the colours are known as cyan, Magenta, yellow and black. when people talk about printers and how fast they print and the quality, the speed is taken in ppm (pages per minute) and the quality is taken in DPI (dots per inch).
reliability and cost
when people say the reliability of a printer it means what warranty does it have, whether it is a 3 or 4 year warranty, it means the amount of time you are allowed before you are not allowed to take the printer back to get another one if it is broken, from faults that were not your own. Reliability also means the scheduled servicing and the mean time between failures also known as MTBF, that the printer has.
Cost is also a major factor when viewing or buying printers. there are 7 points to take in account from the cisco curriculum when considering the cost which are:
1. Initial purchase price 5. warranty costs
2. cost of supplies e.g. paper and ink 6. the amount of material to be printed
3. price per page 7. the expected lifetime of the printer
4. maintenance costs
Laser printer
A laser printer is a printer that can produce various images, at a very high speed and is the fastest of the three printers, when creating basic images and documents like word or an image from google images. The printer uses a laser beam to create the image. A laser printer has 8 main components that all work together in the printing process to allow what you want to be created. these components are a toner cartridge, laser scanner, high voltage power supply, a paper transport mechanism, Transfer corona, Fuser assembly, control circuitry and an Ozone filter. A laser printer has a printing proccess of 6 steps. below is an image of the steps in use from the cisco curriculum at http://vendorlib/curr/ITE_ppt/ITE_PC_v40_Chapter7.html:
Impact printers
an impact printer works by having a printer head to push ink onto a ribbon. when using this type of printer it has many good and bad things about it. some advantages are that it uses inexpensive consumables, uses continuous feed paper and has a cop printing ability. some disadvantages are that it is noisy, It has low resolution graphics, limited colour capability and lastly it prints fairly slower compared to other printers.
Inkjet printers
Ink jet printers work by using ink filled cartridges that are stored behind nozzles, these nozzles are used to spray ink from the cartridges on the page being printed. the ink is sprayed in patterned dots of various colours to create an image. some factors of an ink jet print are that the print is high quality, its easy to use and isn’t that expensive when taking the other printer types in account. when we talk about ink jet printer nozzles there are two types, Thermal and piezoelectric.
Scanner types
A scanner is a peripharel, that enables you to input photo’s and pictures of a hard copy into a soft copy, into the computer.There are four main types of scanners, these scanners are called, An all in one scanner, a flatbed scanner, a drum scanner and lastly a hand held scanner. when the scanner image is in the computer as a soft copy, it can be modified, saved and even e-mailed to other people so they can view the image.
All in one scanners
the first scanner i am going to talk about is the all in one scanner.