Printing methods
La elección del motor de compresión tiene un efecto substancial en los trabajos a los que una impresora está destinada. Hay diferentes tecnologías que tienen diferentes niveles de calidad de imagen, velocidad de impresión, coste, ruido y además, algunas tecnologías son inapropiadas para ciertos tipos de medios físicos (como papel carbón o transparencias).
Otro aspecto de la tecnología de impresión que es frecuentemente olvidado es la resistencia a la alteración: la tinta líquida como de una cabeza de inyección de tinta es absorbida por las fibras del papel, y por eso los documentos impresos con tinta líquida son más difíciles de alterar que los que están impresos por tóner o tinta sólida, que no penetran por debajo de la superficie del papel.
Toner
Laser printers and thermal printers use this method to adhere toner to the media. They work using the principle of xerography that is at work in most photocopiers: adhering toner to a light-sensitive printing drum, and using static electricity to transfer the toner to the printing medium to which it binds thanks to heat and pressure.
Laser printers are known for their high-quality printing, good print speed, and low cost per copy; They are the most common printers for many general-purpose office applications. They are less used by the consumer, generally due to their high initial cost. Laser printers are available in both color and monochrome.
The advent of reasonably priced precision lasers has made the toner-based monochrome printer dominant in office applications. Another type of toner-based printer is the LED printer which uses a collection of LEDs instead of lasers to cause toner to adhere to the printing drum. Toner, also called dry ink by functional analogy with ink, is a fine powder, usually black, that is deposited on the paper to be printed by means of electrostatic attraction (from English, toner).
Inkjet
Inkjet printers (Ink Jet) spray very small amounts of ink into the medium, usually a few picoliters. For color applications, including photo printing, inkjet methods are dominant, as high-quality printers are inexpensive to produce. Virtually all inkjet printers are color devices; Some, known as photo printers, include extra pigments for better reproduction of the color gamut needed for high-quality photo printing (and are additionally capable of printing on photo paper, as opposed to regular office paper).
There are two methods to inject the ink:
solid ink
Solid ink printers, also called phase change printers, are a type of thermal transfer printer but use solid sticks of CMYK color ink (similar in consistency to candle wax). The ink melts and feeds a print head operated by a piezoelectric crystal (for example quartz). The head distributes the ink onto an oiled drum. The paper then passes over the drum as the image is transferred to the paper.
They are commonly used as color printers in offices, as they are excellent at printing transparencies and other non-porous media, and can achieve great results. The acquisition and use costs are similar to laser printers.
The disadvantages of this technology are high energy consumption and long waiting periods (warming up) of the machine. There are also some users who complain that solid ink prints are difficult to write on (wax tends to repel ink from pens), and they are difficult to feed paper automatically, although these traits have been significantly reduced in recent models. Additionally, this type of printer can only be obtained from a single manufacturer, Xerox, as part of its Xerox Phaser line of office printers. Solid ink printers were previously manufactured by Tektronix, but it sold its printing division to
Impact
Impact printers or slam printers rely on impact force to transfer ink to the medium, similar to typewriters, they are generally limited to reproducing text. At the time they dominated quality printing. There are two main types:
Impact printers work with a head in which there are needles, these needles hit a ribbon, similar to that of a typewriter, which generates the impression of the letter.
In the general sense, many printers are based on an array of many pixels or dots that together form the larger image. However, the term matrix or dot is used specifically for impact printers that use an array of small pins to create precise dots. These printers are known as matrix printers. The advantage of dot matrix over other impact printers is that they can produce graphic images as well as text. However, text is generally of poorer quality than type impact-based printers.
Some sub-classifications of dot matrix printers are ballistic wire printers and stored energy printers.
Dot matrix printers can be either character-based or line-based, depending on the print head configuration.
dye sublimation
Dye sublimation printers employ a printing process that uses heat to transfer ink to media such as plastic cards, paper, or canvas. The process usually consists of adding one color at a time using a tape that has panels of color. These printers are primarily intended for high-quality color applications, including color photography, and are less suitable for text. First used in copy shops, they are increasingly being targeted at photo printer consumers.
Thermal
Thermal printers are based on a series of hot needles that run through heat-sensitive paper that turns black upon contact. Due to their low cost, they are widely used in ATMs and supermarkets.