PREPARED BY : MOHD FADHIL BIN RAMLE

 Is an output device that produces text and

graphics on a physical medium such as paper
or transparency film.
 There are several types of printers:
1. Impact printer.
2. Bubble-jet printers.
3. Laser printers (pages printers).
4. Other printers.
 The most basic printer.
 Use some form of impact and an inked
ribbon to make an imprint on the paper.
 Like a typewriter.
 There are two major types of impact
printers:
1. Daisy wheel
2. Dot matrix.
 Contain a wheel (called daisy-wheel because it
looks like a daisy) with raised letters and symbols
on each petal.
 When the printer needs to print a character, it
sends a signal to the mechanism (printhead) that
contains the wheel.
 The printhead rotates the daisy-wheel until the
required character is in replace.
 An electromechanical hammer (called solenoid)
then strikes the back of the petal containin the
character.
 The character pushes up against an inked ribbon
that ultimately strikes the paper, makin the
impression of the requested character.
A daisy-wheel printer mechanism
 Speed is rated by the number of characters
per second (cps) they can print.
 Disadvantages:
◦ The early printers could only print between two
and four characters per second.
◦ The other advantage is that it makes a lot of
noise when printing.
 Advantages:
◦ Can print on multipart forms (like carbonless
receipts).
◦ Inexpensive compared to the price of laser printer
at the same vintage.
◦ The print quality (LQ) is comparable to that of a
typewriter because it uses a very similar
technology.
 These printers work in a manner similar to daisy-
wheel printers, but instead of a spinning,
character-imprinted wheel, the printhead contains
a row of pins (short, sturdy stalks of hard wire).
 These pins are triggered in patterns that form
letters and numbers as the printhead move across
the paper.
 The early dot-matrix printers used only nine pins
to make those patterns.
 As more pins crammed into the printhead (17-pin
and 24-pin models were eventually developed), the
quality increased (Near Letter Quality).
Formation of images in a dot-matrix printer
 The pins in the printhead are wrapped with
coils of wire to create a solenoid and are
held in the rest position by a combination of
a small magnet and spring.
 To trigger a particular pin, the printer
controller sends a signal to the printhead,
which energizes the wires around the
appropriate print wire.
 This turns the print wire into an
electromagnet, which repels the print pin,
forcing it against the ribbon and making a
dot on the printer.
 Disadvantages:
◦ Image quality (draft quality) is quite poor compared
to the quality produced with a daisy wheel.
 Advantages:
◦ Print speed is faster (typically in the range of 36 to
72cps).
◦ Can use multipart forms.
 An advanced form of an older technology
known as inkjet printers.
 Both types of printers spray ink on the
pages, but inkjet printers used a reservoir
of ink, a pump and an ink nozzle to
accomplish this.
 Inkjet printer were messy, noisy an
inefficient and bubble-jet printers work
much more efficiently and are much
cheaper.
 In a bubble-jet printer, bubbles of ink are
sprayed onto a page and form patterns that
resemble the items being printed.
 The printer parts can be divided into the
following cateories.
◦ Printhead/ink catridge.
◦ Head carriage, belt and stepper motor.
◦ Paper-feed mechanism.
◦ Control, interface and power curcuitry.
 Contains many small nozzles (usually 100-
200) that spray the ink in small dots onto the
page.
 Many times the printhead is part of the ink
catridge, which contain reservoir of ink and
the printhead in a removable package.
 Colour bubble-jet printers include multiple
printhead, one for each of the CMYK print
inks.
Chamber
 Inside the ink cartridge are small chambers.
 At the top of each chamber are a metal

plate and a tube leading to the ink supply.

 At the bottom of each chamber is a small

pinhole used to spray ink on the page to

form character and images as patterns of
dots (similar to a dot-matrix printer but
with higher resolution).
 There are two methods of spraying the ink out of
the catridge.
1. First developed by Hewlett-Packard (HP):
◦ When a particular chamber needs to spray ink, an
electrical signal is sent to to the heating element,
energizing it.
◦ The elements heat up quickly, causing the ink to
vaporize.
◦ Because of the expanding ink vapor, the ink is pushed
out the pinhole and forms a bubble.
◦ As the vapor expands, the bubble eventually gets large
enough to break off into a droplet.
◦ The rest of the ink is pulled back into the chamber by
the surface tension of theh ink.
◦ When another drop needs to be sprayed, the process
begins again.
2. Second method developed by Epson:
◦ Use a piezoelectric element that flexes when
energized.
◦ The outward flex pushes the ink from the nozzle;
on the return, it sucks more ink from the
reservoir.
 Printhead carriage : moves back and forth during
printing.
 Contains the physical as electronic connections for
the printhead and the ink reservoir.
 To keep the printhead carriage aligned and stable,
the carriage rests on a small metal stabilizer bar.

A printhead carriage in
a bubble-jet printer
 Stepper motor and belt make the printhead
carriage move.
 Stepper motor:
◦ Move in the same very small increment each time
it is activated.
◦ Move the printhead.
◦ Called carriage motor or carriage stepper motor.
 Belt:
◦ Placed around two small wheels or pulleys and
attached to the printhead.
◦ Called carriage belt, and driven by the carriage
motor.
A carriage
stepper
motor
Stabilizer bar, carriage belt, and pulley in a bubble jet printer
Pickup Rollers.
 Several rubber rollers with a slightly flat spot; they
rub against the paper as they rotate, and feed the
paper into the printer.
Separator pads.
 Keep the rest of the paper in place.

Paper Tray
 Holds the paper until it is fed into the printer.

Paper Feeder
 The paper is placed vertically into paper feeder at
the back of the printer; it uses gravity with
combination with feed rollers and separator pads,
to get the paper into the printer.
Bubble-jet pickup rollers
Bubble-jet seperator pads
A paper tray on a bubble jet printer
Paper-Feed Sensor.
 Tell the printer when it is out of paper, as well as

when a paper jam occurred during the paper feed

process.

Paper-Feed Sensor
Printer control circuit.
 Contains the circuitry to run the stepper motors.
 Monitoring the health of the printer and reporting
that information back to the PC
Interface Circuit (commonly called a port).
 Make a physical connection to whatever signal is
coming from the computer (parallel, serial, SCSI,
network, infrared and so on).
 Connect the interface to control circuit.
 Convert the signals from the computer into the
datastream that the printer uses.

Power Circuits.
 Convert 110V or 220V into 12V and 5V.
 Laser printers and inkjet printers are
referred to as page printers because they
received their printer job instructions one
page at a time.
 Two major types of page printers:

◦ Use the electrophotographic (EP) print process.

◦ Use the light-emitting diode (LED) print process.
 Scientist at Xerox developed the
electrophotographic (EP) process in 1971.
 Xerox, Hewlett-Packard and Canon were

pioneer in laser printer technology.

 This technology uses a combination of static

electric charges, laser light and a black

powdery substance called toner.
Basic Components
 Contains eight standard assemblies:
◦ Toner cartridge
◦ Laser scanner
◦ High-voltage power supply
◦ DC power supply
◦ Paper transport assembly
◦ Transfer corona.
◦ Fusing assembly
◦ Controller circuitry
◦ Ozone filter.
Toner Cartridge
 Hold the toner.
 Toner = black carbon substance + polyster resins
(to make it flow better) + iron oxide particles (to
make the toner sensitive to electrical charges).
 This two components make the toner capable of
being attracted to the photosensitive drum and of
melting into the paper.
 Developer carries the toner until it is used by the EP
process.
 Print Drum is coated with photosensitive material
that can hold static charge when not exposed to
light.
 Cleaning blade continuously scrapes the used toner
off the photosensitive drum to keep it clean.
An EP toner cartridge
Laser Scanning Assembly
 Shine particular area of the photosensitive
drum.
 The drum will discharge but only in that area.
 The laser light is damaging to human eyes,
therefore the laser is kept in an enclosure and
will operate when the laser printer’s cover is
closed.
The EP laser assembly (side view and simplified top view)
High-voltage Power Supply (HVPS)
 EP process requires high-voltage electricity.
 HVPS provide the high voltages during the

EP process.
 Converts house AC current (120V and 60Hz)

into higher voltages that the printer can

use.
 This high voltage is used to energize both

the charging corona and transfer corona.

DC Power Supply (DCPS)
 The high voltage cannot power the other

components in the printer (the logic circuit

and motors).
 Convert house AC current into +5VDC,

-5VDC (for logic circuit) and +24VDC (for

paper transport motor).
Paper Transport Assembly
 Moving the paper through the printer.
 Feed roller: D-shaped roller that rotates
again the paper and pushes one sheet into
the printer.
 Registration roller: there are two
registration roller that synchronize the
paper movement with the image-formation
process.
Paper transport rollers
Transfer Corona Assembly
 Transfer corona is given a high-voltage
charge which is transferred to the paper
which pulls the toner from the
photosensitive drum.
 Static –eliminator strip: drain away the
charge imparted to the paper by corona.
Paper would stick to the EP cartridge and
jam the paper if the charge didn’t away.
 Two type of transfer corona assemblies:
◦ Contains a transfer corona wire
◦ Contains a transfer corona roller
The transfer corona assembly
Fusing Assembly
 Use two rollers that apply pressure and heat
to fuse the plastic toner particles to the
paper.
 Made up of three parts: a halogen heating
lamp, a Teflon-coated aluminum fusing
roller and rubberized pressure roller.
 Halogen lamp heat the fusing roller to
between 165oC-180oC.
 As paper pass through the two rolles, the
presure roller pushes the paper against the
fusing roller which melts the toner into the
paper.
The fuser
Printer Controller Circuit
 Converts signals from the computer into

signal for various assemblies in the laser

printer using process called known as
resterizing.
 Formats the information into page’s worth of

line-by-line commands for the laser printer.

Ozone filter
 Ozone is a chemically reactive gas that
created by the high-voltage coronas.
 Ozone can reduce the life of laser printers
component.
 Ozone filter used to remove ozone gas.
 But, many newer laser printer don’t have
ozone filter because they done use transfer
corona wires but instead use transfer
corona roller.
Electrophotographic (EP) Print Process.
1. Cleaning
2. Charging
3. Writing
4. Developing
5. Transferring
6. Fusing
STEP 1 : Cleaning
 Rubber blade inside EP cartridge scrapes

any toner left on the drum.

 Fluorescent lamp discharge any remaining

charge on the photosensitive drum.

The cleaning step of the EP process
STEP 2 : Charging
 special wire or roller (called charging

corona) within EP toner cartridge gets high

voltage to apply strong, uniform negative
charge (around -600VDC) to the surface of
the photosensitive drum.
The charging step of the EP process
STEP 3 : Writing
 Laser is turn on and scans the drum from side to

side.
 The laser flashing on and off according to the bits

of information.
 Wherever the laser beam touches, the

photosensitive drum’s charge is severely reduced

from -600VDC to a slight negative charge (-
100VDC).
 As the drum rotates, a pattern of exposed area is

formed, representing the image to be printed.

The writing step of the EP process
STEP 4 : Developing
 Surface of drum holds an electrical

representation of image to be printed.

The developing step of the EP process
STEP 5 : Transferring
 The controller sends a signal to the charging
corona wire or roller and tells it to turn on.
 The corona wire/roller acquires a strong positive
charge (+600VDC) and apply that charge to the
paper.
 The paper thus charged, pulls the toner from the
photosensitive drum at the line of contact between
the roller and paper, because the paper and have
positive charge.
 Once the registration roller move the paper past
the corona wire, the static-eliminator strip removes
all charge from that linbe of the paper.
The transferring step of the EP process
STEP 6 : Fusing
 The toner image is made permanent.
 As the paper passes through the fuser, the

350oF fuser roller melts the polyester resin

of the toner and rubberized pressure roller
presses it permanently into the paper.
The fusing step of the EP process
The EP print process
 Primarily developed by Okidata and
Panasonic.
 There are two main differences between a

LED page printer and a laser printer: toner

cartridges and print process.
LED Page Printer Toner Cartridges
 Photosensitive drum/toner and toner

separate and replaceable item.

 When replacing the photosensitive drum, you

swing the photosensitive drum/toner

cartridge out of the printer first.
 Filling the toner hopper is fairly easy.
LED Page Printer Process
 Same process as a laser printer.
 Use a row of small light-emitting diodes held very close to
the photosensitive drum to expose it.
 Each LED is about the same size as the diameter of the laser
beam used in laser printers.
 Basically same as EP process printers except that in the
writing step , they used LED instead of a laser.
 Benefit:
◦ Cheaper
◦ Smaller
◦ not dangerous to eye
 Disadvantages over laser printer
◦ Resolution 800dpi
◦ Messier (because its slight static charge, toner isn’t easy to
removefrom surfaces).
 Printer Interface: collection of hardware and
software that allows the printer to
communicate with computer.
◦ Hardware-port
◦ Interface software-correct software for the platform
being used.
Communication Types
 Ports used in getting the printed

information from the computer to the

printer.
 Eight major type: serial, parallel, Universal

Serial Bus (USB), network, infrared, SCSI,

IEEE 1394 and wireless.
SERIAL
 Send data one bit at a time.

PARALLEL
 Receiving data 8 bit at a time over eight separate
wires.
 Faster than serial
 Parallel cable consists of DB-25 connector that
connects to the computer and a male 36-pin
Centronics connector.
 Cable long less than 10 feetlong.
 Should be IEEE 1284 compliant.
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
 Most popular type of printer interface.
 Higher transfer rate than either serial or parallel.
 Automatically recognizes new devices.

NETWORK
 Some newer printers (laser and LED printers) have
special interface that allows them to be hooked
directly to a network.
 This printers have a network interface card and
ROM based software that allows them to
communicate with networks, servers and
workstations.
INFRARED
 Many laser printers (and some computer) come
with infrared transmitter/receivers so that they can
communicate with the infrared ports on many
handhelds.
 The infrared interfaces are enabled by default on
most computer, handhelds and printers.

SCSI
 Only few types of printers use SCSI interfaces to the
PC: laser printers, dye-sublimation printers or
typesetters
 Benefit:
◦ There could be more than one device on a single SCSI
connection through daisy chaining.
◦ Fairly simple to implement.
◦ Had large throughput compared to other interfaces of time.
IEEE 1394 FIREWIRE
 .supports devices with a maximum
throughput of 800MBps and is capable of
speeds up to 3.2Gbps.

WIRELESS
 Some printers have bulilt-in 802.11
interfaces or are hooked to 802.11 bridges
with their built-in network cards.
 Another wireless technology is bluetooth
with maximum range is 100 meters and
most device work within 10meters.
 Need regular cleaning .
 The condition of both the platen and the
print head direcly impacts print quality.
 If too much dried ink and print fiber gets
jammed into the print head, the pins might
not be ejected by the springs.
 Never send print job onto dot matrix printer
when there’s no paper installed.
 Both the print head and the platen need to
be in proper alignment as well, if not,
individual characters will shade from light
to dark.
 Printer errors will generally fall under one of
four categories:
1. Communication errors.
2. Processing errors
3. Paper transport errors
4. Imaging errors
1. Communication error
• Occur when computer can’t find the printer.
• First thing to check is cable
• Bypass the driver by opening a command
prompt and copying an ASCII tect file directly
to LPT1.
 As example:
i. open notepad, type out a few characters and save the
file as C:\document\test.txt.
ii. At command prompt, type copy C:\document\test.txt.
LPT1 and see if the printer fires up and spits out the
document.
• If it does, you have physical connectivity to the
printer. The problem is in the configuration.
• Reinstall the driver and use the correct one this
time.
2. Processing Error
• Occur when the data gets to the printer, but
nothing but gobbledygook comes out.
• Frequently this is simply a corrupted printer
driver and can be fixed easily by reinstalling
driver.
• In laser printers, there are two other things
that can cause this: bad memory and chip
failure.
• Also cause by insufficient memory to process a
given job.
3. Paper transport error
• Cause by paper jams or the paper not being
picked up out of the delivery tray.
• Paper jam cause by rollers are smooth and
medium not supported (too light or too heavy)
by printer.
4. Imaging Errors
• Cause by unwanted marks on the page,
smearing, a totally black page, or skewed image.
• How to solve:
 Pull the toner cartridge and in dim light open the
shutter and rotate the imaging drum around.