Understanding Printers: Types, Mechanisms, and Drivers

Printers

A printer is a peripheral that allows you to produce a permanent copy of text or graphics from documents stored in electronic form. It achieves this by printing on physical media. The computer sends data to be printed using a special page description language. This data is delivered to the printer driver, interpreted using a page description language, and generates the final image to print.

Printer Driver

• Gets the information from the computer and stores it in an input buffer.
• Creates the image, taking data from the buffer and interpreting it according to a PDL.
• Dispatches data line by line to the video interface.

Video Interface

1. Transmits the image data to the printing mechanism, rasterized at a constant speed and a fixed resolution.
2. A two-state controller transmits to the printing mechanism.
3. Transmits the printing mechanism controller's instructions.

The printing mechanism is a set of pieces that capture the image on paper by composing draw points.

Sources:

Data set showing how to transform a character into its corresponding image. Features:

• Types of data source: The characters of a font may be stored in two ways: stating point-to-point or memorizing the image proportions.
• Character: The set of characters for which the source has an image.
• Spacing: Indicates the space provided before and after the character.
• Character-width: This is the measured width of the character as characters per inch.
• Font: An aspect that has the power and that is unlike any other.

Types of Printers

Inkjet:

These printers have a head equipped with several nozzles that eject tiny droplets of ink when they receive the right incentive. These droplets impact the paper, forming the points to draw the text or image. They use a series of replaceable cartridges that provide the ink. Speed is measured in pages per minute (ppm), and resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi).

• Tiny-Tech thermal heating elements are used to eject ink droplets from print head nozzles.
• Piezoelectric crystals have a unique property. If physical force is applied to them, they can generate an electric charge.

Laser Printers:

Laser printers are faster and have higher resolution values. The main drawback is the high price. Consumables are also quite expensive, but they last much longer.