Printers and Multifunction Devices

Tractor Feed

A continuous feed within an impact printer that feeds fanfold paper through the printer rather than individual sheets, making them useful for logging ongoing events or data.

Pickup Roller

A part in a printer that pushes forward a sheet of paper from the paper tray.

Local Printer

A printer connected to a computer by way of a port on the computer. Compare to network printer.

Duplexing Assembly

A printer hardware component that is responsible for turning the paper over so that it can be printed on both sides.

PCL (Printer Control Language)

A printer language developed by Hewlett-Packard that communicates to a printer how to print a page.

Separation Pad

A printer part that keeps more than one sheet of paper from moving forward.

Network Printer

A printer that any user on the network can access, through its own network card and connection to the network, through a connection to a stand-alone print server, or through a connection to a computer as a local printer, which is shared on the network.

Thermal Wax Transfer Printer

A printer that uses a thermal printhead to melt wax-based ink from a transfer ribbon onto the paper.

Thermal Printer

A printer that works either by melting wax-based ink onto ordinary paper (in a process called thermal wax transfer printing) or by burning dots onto specially coated paper (in a process called direct thermal printing).

Ink Cartridge

A reservoir of ink and a print head in a removable package.

Imaging Drum

A round cylinder covered with photosensitive material and used in laser printers.

Dot-Matrix Printer

A type of impact printer that uses small pins to strike an inked ribbon to produce tiny dots on the paper.

Dye-Sublimation Printer

A type of nonimpact printer that prints high-quality images by using heat to transfer colored ink to specially coated paper.

Inkjet Printer

A type of printer that uses a nonimpact process. Ink is squirted from nozzles as they pass over the media.

Direct Thermal Printer

A type of thermal printer that burns dots onto special coated paper as was done by older fax machines.

Toner Vacuum

A vacuum cleaner designed to pick up toner used in laser printers and does not allow it to touch any conductive surface. Never used compressed air to clean laser printers!

Ozone Filter

A ventilation component that removes the ozone that is generated inside printers during the printing process.

Printer Calibration

Adjusting the alignment and accuracy of color and monochrome output.

Daisy-Wheel Printer

An impact printer that uses a plastic or metal print mechanism with a different character on the end of each spoke of the wheel. As the print mechanism rotates to the correct letter, a small hammer strikes the character against the ribbon, transferring the image onto the paper.

Diagnostic Print Page

An important test to check the output of a Laser Printer. Can be done by holding down the On Line button as the printer is started or by using printer maintenance software.

Impact Printer

An output device that creates printed images by striking an inked ribbon against paper.

MFD (Multifunction Device)

Any device that performs more than one function. For example, multifunction printers that can print, scan, copy, and fax are common.

Print Spooler

Area of memory that queues up print jobs that the printer will handle sequentially.

Printhead

Case that holds the printwires in a dot-matrix printer.

All-In-One Printer

Combines the functions of a printer, scanner, copier, and fax into one machine.

RIP (Raster Image Processor)

Component in a printer that translates the raster image into commands for the printer.

Erase Lamp

Component inside laser printers that uses light to make the coating of the photosensitive drum conductive.

GDI (Graphical Device Interface)

Component of Windows that utilizes the CPU rather than the printer to process a print job as a bitmapped image of each page.

Print Server

Computer on a network that receives and processes print requests.

System Board

Connects all system components and allows input and output devices to communicate with the system unit.

NLQ (Near-Letter Quality)

Designation for dot-matrix printers that use 24-pin printheads.

MSDSs (Material Safety Data Sheets)

Documents that contain vital information about hazardous substances

Laser Printer

Electrostatic printer that focuses a laser beam to form images that are transferred to paper electrostatically

Printwires

Grid of tiny pins in a dot-matrix printer that strike an inked printer ribbon to produce images on paper.

Solid Ink Printer

Head jets the melted ink onto the paper as the paper passes by on the print drum (similar to the laser printing process). Takes as long as 15 minutes. Excellent print quality.

Continuous-Tone Image

Image in which the transition from light to dark is achieved by a continuous increase in density (as opposed to a line image).

Dithered Image

Image using closely packed, single color dots to simulate blended colors.

PostScript

Language defined by Adobe Systems, Inc., for describing how to create an image on a page. The description is independent of the resolution of the device that will actually create the image. It includes a technology for defining the shape of a font and creating a raster image at many different resolutions and sizes.

Print Speed

Measured in pages per minute (PPM).

Fuser Assembly

Mechanism in laser printers that uses two rollers to fuse toner to paper during the print process.

Flatbed Scanner

Most popular form of consumer scanner; runs a bright light along the length of the tray to capture an image.

Virtual Printer

Outputs a file instead of a physical hardcopy. Includes Print to PDF, XPS, Image, and Cloud / Remote Printing.

Primary Corona (Charge Roller)

Part of a laser printer that is charged with extremely high voltage and enables voltage to pass to the Imaging Drum and charge the photosensitive particles on its surface.

Transfer Corona (Transfer Roller)

Part of a laser printer which transfers the image from the Imaging Drum to paper.

Raster Image

Pattern of dots representing what the final product should look like.

Spot Color

Printing in at least one additional color besides black.

XPS (XML Paper Specification) Print Path

Printing subsystem in Windows. Has enhanced color management and good print layout fidelity.

Laser Printing Process

Processing, charging, exposing, developing, transferring, fusing, cleaning.

TWAIN (Technology Without An Interesting Name)

Programming interface that enables a graphics application, such as a desktop publishing program, to activate a scanner, frame grabber, or other image-capturing device.

Power Supply

Provides power to the printer.

Print Resolution

Quality of a print image measured in DPI (Dots Per Inch).

RET (Resolution Enhancement Technology)

Technology that uses small dots to smooth out jagged edges that are typical of printers without RET, producing a higher-quality print job.

Toner Cartridge

The cartridge for a laser printer that contains both the medium (toner) and other printing components.

CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black)

The four ink colors used to create most process color printing.

Carriage

The part of the printer that carries the ink cartridges on the x-axis.

Draft Quality

The poorest quality standard of output from a dot-matrix printer, suitable only for early document review.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

The primary encoding character set used in computers for textual data transfer between applications. The set uses eight bits for each character code, one of these bits being a check bit to verify the seven bits needed to represent one character.

Toner

Tiny, plasticized pellets that are sensitive to static charges that can be attracted to the paper, heated, and then fused to the paper.

Laser

Writing mechanism of the laser printer.