Printers

Printer is an output device, which is used to convert the digital data from the computer to a printed format in a hard copy.
It has two types:
1. Impact printer

2. Non-impact printers
Impact printer

This Kind of printer apply by a physical force and get impress from the character is said to be impact printer
Types: 1. Dot matrix printer 2. Daisy wheel printer 3. Line printer

Non-impact printer

This kind of printer print without any physical force.

Types: 1. Laser printer 2. Ink. Jet printer 3. Bubble jet printer

 Based on the Direction of Printing Unidirectional Printers - allows the printer to print in only one direction. Bi-directional Printers - can print in both directions and hence it is faster. Based on the amount of data that can be printed at a time Line Printers - can print an entire line at a time and are high-speed printers. Page printers can print one page of data at a time. Multi Function Printers A multi function printer may contain a printer, a scanner, a copier, a media card reader, a Fax etc.

 The printer specifications are Printer Resolution Print Memory Speed Paper type Page description language Printer Control Language (PCL) Post Script Fonts Printer Interface
Serial Interface USB Interface Parallel Interface SCSI Interface Firewire

Dot-Matrix Printer
Overview of Dot-Matrix Printers The print head strikes the inked ribbon to print a character. The print head consists of multiple small pins The print head strikes the ribbon that is placed between the pins and the paper.

 Types of Dot-Matrix Printers

Unidirectional and bidirectional Printers 9-Pin, 18-Pin, 24 pin Print Head Printers 80 Column and 132 Column Printers Monochrome and Color Printer

SECTION OF DOT MATRIX PRINTER (DMP)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Power supply section Front panel section Motors Sensors Mechanical section

Various Mechanical Section: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Paper feeding mechanism Cartridge movement Head movement mechanism Head assembling mechanism Friction feeding mechanism

SECTION OF DOT MATRIX PRINTER (DMP) Power Supply

The power supply section of a dot matrix printer converts the AC power supply into DC power Supply.
Front Panel Section

Switches presented in the Dot Matrix Printer On line switch Form feed Line feed/ sans serif switch NLQ/Draft switch Condensed/normal switch The indicators present in the control panel
Power (Green) Ready (Green) . Paper Out

Sensors present in Dot Matrix Printers Home Position Sensor - is used to verify if the print head carriage assembly is towards the left margin. Head Position Sensor - It provides to keep the head in position Paper End Sensor It is used to detect if there is paper in the printer.

Paper Feed Motor It is a stepper motor used to feed the paper into the next line.

OTHER AREAS OF DMP 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.
Head

Cartridge Head Ribbon Rail Logical board Carriage Assembly

The head carriage assembly consists of a carriage motor, timing belt and driving pulley.
Printer

logic board

printer logic board consist of 1.A print processor 2. Printer Buffer (RAM) 3. A printer ROM for storing the dot patterns and 4. Power supply unit

Working of Dot Matrix Printers

The computer sends the ASCI code for the data to the printer through the printer interface.
The processor obtains the dot pattern information from the bit map table stored in the printer ROM and sends it to the print head. The print head then fires the pins accordingly for producing the character.

Ink Jet Printers

Introduction
Inkjet printer is a type of non-impact printer. The data is printed by spraying droplets of ink on to the paper for creating images. Inkjet printers can also be used to take photo quality images.

Types & Parts of an Inkjet Printer

The types of the inkjet printer are
Solid Ink Printers Dye Sublimation Printers Thermal Wax Printers Thermal Auto Chrome Printers Print Head - It includes a series of spray drops of ink.

Ink Cartridges There are various combination of ink cartridge.

Print head stepper motor

 Print head assembly Belt - It is used to connect the print head assembly to the stepper motor. Stabilizer bar used by the print head assembly to ensure that the movement is accurate and controlled. Paper feed assembly Paper tray/ feeder On the back of the printer, the feeder snaps open at an angle, which allows you to place paper in it. Rollers A set of rollers pull the paper inside from the tray or

 Paper feed stepper motor The stepper motor controls the rollers. Power supply - Most of the printers use a standard power supply. Control circuitry Circuitry is built into the printer to control all the mechanical aspects

Interface The new printers use the USB port but the parallel port is still used by many printers.

 Thermal bubble
In this type of printer tiny resistors create heat, which vaporizes the ink to create a bubble. As the heat applied to the ink is increased the bubble starts expanding, and some amount of ink is pushed out of a nozzle onto the paper.

 Piezoelectric A crystal is present in the rear end of each nozzle. The crystal receives a tiny electric charge, which causes vibration on it. A tiny amount of ink will come out of the nozzle when the crystal vibrates inward.

 The software application sends the data to be printed to the printer driver
The driver converts the data into a format that the printer can understand. Printer accumulates a certain amount of data in a buffer

The paper feed stepper motor is activated by the control circuitry

The roller inserts a sheet of paper from the paper tray/ feeder into the printer The print head is parked after the printing process is complete.

Laser Printer
Introduction
Laser printer is another type of non-impact printers. Laser printer does not use ink instead uses a powder type material called toner for printing characters on the paper. The Characteristics of Laser printer are

Resolution Memory Speed

Components of Laser Printer

The various components of a laser printer

 Toner Cartridge - contains the toner for printing the data on to the paper. Laser Scanning Assembly - When the laser beam is moved over the surface of the drum, the laser sends a pulse of light for every dot to be printed and no pulse for every dot of empty space.

High Voltage Power Supply - The high voltage power supply unit takes the AC supply and converts them into high voltage. DC power supply unit - The DC power supply unit produces +5V, -5V, and +24V DC which is used for the motors and other Integrated chips in the printer board.

 Paper

Transport System - It deals with the paper path that is followed and the mechanism employed to move the paper from the input tray to the output tray.

Transfer Corona Assembly It is used to charge the paper with the positive charge when it moves through the electrostatic drum. Fusing assembly It contains the rollers for applying pressure and heat to grab the toner particles from the photosensitive drum to the paper. Formatter Board It is the circuit board, which contains the printer controller, which controls the operations of the printer.

 Printer Buffer - There are two types of print buffer 1. Page buffer 2. Band buffer. The page buffer is used to hold the complete page array information.

Band buffers are utilized to minimize the memory requirements in the printer.

Working of Laser Printer The photoreceptor drum is given a positive charge with the help of the corona wire.
Instead of corona wire charged rollers can also be used to charge the drum. The positively charged toner is attracted by the negatively charged pattern that is present in the photo receptor drum.

The printer passes the paper through the fuser which consists of a pair of heated rollers which are heated Quartz tube lamps.

Benefits of Laser Printer The speed of Laser printer is high when compared to an Inkjet printer. The Laser printer can be very accurate. The maintenance cost of laser printer is less compared to ink jet printers. In earlier days at the time of introduction, laser printers were expensive . The resolution offered by a laser printer is the best.

 Data Processing
The printer controller is an interface between the printer and the computer. The laser printer can be shared and can be used by many people in the network.

Data Formatting
An advanced communication languages, include the Hewlett Packards Printer Command Language and the Adobes Postscript. The printer controller in laser printer decides on the type of paper, formatting of the page and the font to use etc.

Scanners

Overview
Scanner is a modern tool which converts the
visual information into digital data.

Scanner is capable of capturing color picture, document, and pages from books and magazine.

With the right attachments, it can even scan

transparent photographic film also.

How scanners work These scanners are called drum scanners.

Drum scanners have a glass cylinder or drum where the image to be scanned is mounted on.

In the middle of the drum is a light-splitting sensor which breaks the light bounced from the document into red, green and blue components

These colored light beams are bounced through color filters to a photomultiplier tube or charge coupled device (CCD)

The following figure illustrates this better

 The types of scanners are

Flatbed Scanners Sheet-fed scanners Handheld scanners Drum scanners

Flatbed scanners

 Sheet-bed scanners
Sheet-fed scanners look like small printers and operate similarly to flatbeds, except the document is fed through the device while the scan head is immobile. Some may require the user to manually feed the documents one at a time.

 Handheld scanners In a handheld scanners when you press the scan button a light-emitting diode (LED) illuminates the image below the scanner. An inverted, angled mirror that sits right above the scanners window reflects the image onto a lens in the back of the scanner.

The lens focuses a single line of the image onto a CCD (charge coupled device).

 Drum scanners Drum scanner is more often used by the publishing business to capture lots of detailed images. The technology called Photomultiplier Tube (PMT) is used by the Drum scanner.

Specification of the scanner

Specifications

The specifications of scanners are Resolution Interpolation

Resolution

The resolution of the scanner decides how many separate spots on the original can actually be scanned. If the resolution is high, the sharpness of the image also will be high.
Interpolation

The interpolation can improve the quality of documents

Interfaces used by scanners

There are three common types of interfaces used by scanners to connect with computer.

Parallel Small computer system interface (SCSI) Universal serial bus (USB)

Fire wire