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explain the types of printer.

Types of Printer

There are four main types of printer: 

1) Laser 

The laser printer is very expensive to buy but cheap-ish to run. The output quality is very high, and it prints very fast 

2) Dot- Matrix 

It's very old, very slow, and very noisy. IT also has a poor output quality, however it's cheap to buy and fairly reliable. 

3) Ink-Jet or Bubble-Jet 

These are cheap-ish to buy. The quality of print is high, and they are quite fast printers. However, the printer inks are very expensive, and if the print-out gets wet, it has a tendency to smear. 

4) Dye diffusion printers 

This is very expensive, but they have millions of shades of colors  Solid Ink printers are page printers that use solid wax ink sticks in a "phase-change" process. They work by liquefying wax ink sticks into reservoirs, and then squirting the ink onto a transfer drum, from where it is cold-fused onto the paper in a single pass. Solid-ink printers offer better color consistency than do most technologies, with little variation caused by changes in temperature, humidity, or type of paper. Solid ink machines have better reliability, because they have fewer components in comparison, for example with color laser printers.

Dye Sublimation printers are professional devices widely used in demanding graphic arts and photographic applications. True these printers work by heating the ink so that it turns from a solid into a gas. The heating element can be set to different temperatures, thus controlling the amount of ink laid down in one spot. In practice, this means that color is applied as a continuous tone, rather than in dots, as with an inkjet. One color is laid over the whole of one sheet at a time, starting with yellow and ending with black. The ink is on large rolls of film which contain sheets of each color, so for an A4 print it will have an A4-size sheet of yellow, followed by a sheet of cyan, and so on. Dye sublimation requires particularly expensive special paper, as the dyes are designed to diffuse into the paper surface, mixing to create precise color shades.

Portable printers are usually fairly lightweight and sometimes carry the option of using a battery instead of drawing power from the computer. Usually they realize basic print resolutions suitable for plain text printing. You can find on the market the following types of the portable printers: Thermal printer, Thermal transfer printer and Ink-Jet printer. The main advantage of thermal and thermal transfer printers is that they can be very small. The smallest thermal and thermal transfer printers weigh approximately one pound. Usually the ink-jet portable printer weighs more than 2 pounds. Thermal printers require a special type of paper.

Plotters are large-scale printers that are very accurate at reproducing line drawings. They are commonly used for technical drawings such as engineering drawings or architectural blueprints. The two basic types of plotters are called flatbed plotters and drum plotters. Flatbed plotters are horizontally aligned with a flat surface to which a piece of paper is attached. The paper remains stationary and the printer moves pens across the paper to draw the image. Drum plotters, also called upright plotters, are vertically positioned. They have a drum that the paper rolls on. Drum plotters usually make more noise and are more compact than flatbed plotters.

Digital Photo printers Many middle range printers are now able to print photo quality images. Usually an option with color printers, specialist photo print heads allow a greater resolution to be achieved to improve photo image quality. Photo ink jet printers expand their gamuts by adding additional ink colors, usually light cyan and light magenta.

Network printer is a printer that provides output capabilities to all network users.

Multifunction printers: combine top-quality color ink-jet or laser printing with plain-paper and PC faxing, color copying and color scanning , telephoning- all in one convenient, space-saving machine. If you work from home or have a small office a multifunctional device may be ideal. 

The Bravo AutoPrinter is the worlds first automated CD/DVD printing system that can truly be called innovative. It combines automatic, robotic-based CD or DVD printing along with full-color, 2400 dpi disc printing all in one compact, desktop unit.

Printers for banking: these printers realize innovative technology and functionality to increase productivity, and reduce costs.