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Impact Printer: Impact printer prints the contents by striking the printer head or needle, on an ink ribbon
that rolls through the cartridge to make a mark on the paper.
Impact Printer can be classified into:
Line Printer: A line printer prints the contents line by line. The printing speed of line printers varies from
300 to 3000 lines per minute. Generally, a line printer is used because of its greater printing capacity and
higher speed than serial printers. It can be further divided into two types i.e. Drum Printer and Chain
Printer.
Character Printer: A character printer is also known as a serial printer. It prints the contents character -by-
character, i.e., it prints a character at a time in serial order. It can be further divided into Daisy Wheel Printer,
Dot Matrix Printer, etc.
Dot Matrix Printer: It is the most commonly used printer. It is also
known as the ‘Wire Matrix’ printer. In a dot matrix printer, the printer head
contains a matrix of pins. The characters are printed by dots which are
formed by striking the pins on the ribbon with the help of a small ‘printer
head’ which moves to and fro across the page and stops momentarily at
each character position to strike the print ribbon.
A print head of a Dot matrix printer contains 9 or 24 pins. The Dot matrix printer is cheaper and has low
printing cost than other printers. The width of a dot matrix printer can be 80 or 132 or 136 columns. The Dot
matrix printer can print up to 100 to 300 characters in a second. The resolution of the printing ranges from
150 to 300 dots per inch (dpi).
Non-Impact Printer: Non-Impact printer prints the output without touching or striking the ribbon on paper
or the film. This kind of printer prints by using thermal, chemical, electrostatic, laser beam or inkjet technology.
Usually, non-impact printer has greater resolution and is faster as compared to impact printer. Non-impact
printers can print colorful content also. This printer can be classified into:
Inkjet Printer: An inkjet printer produces high-quality print outputs by spraying
drops of ink (which is stored in coloured and black cartridges). This printer has a
print head that contains the cartridge that has several tiny holes through which
the ink is sprayed on the paper.
An inkjet printer can print up to 2 to 10 pages per minute. Its printing is
costlier than that of a dot matrix printer but its quality is much better than
that and it prints at a medium pace. Inkjet printer prints photo quality
images with a resolution of 400 to 4000 dpi (dots per inch).
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