T-21: Printers

What are the seven steps in Laser Printing?

1.) Processing Image 2.) Conditioning or Charging 3.) Exposing 4.) Developing 5.) Transferring 6.) Fusing 7.) Cleaning

What are the two ways to install a shared printer in Windows 7?

1.) Use Windows Explorer, and then Network or Network Places Window 2.) Use Control Panel Devices and Printers window.

Print Servers

A hardware or software that manages print jobs sent to one or more printers on a network. Can be a dedicated hardware device with software installed on a computer on the network. (programs embedded in firmware on a printer)

What is a Inkjet Printer?

A printer that is one of the most popular types of printers in use today since it provides good-quality and reasonably fast printing. The ink is stored in special small containers called ink cartridges.

What is a Impact Printer?

A printer that uses some form of impact and an inked ribbon to make an imprint on the printer. These printers also use a paper feed mechanism called a tractor feed that requires special paper.

Managing the printer queue

Access the print queue by double-clicking the printer icon either in the Devices and Printers window or on the task bar when active.

What steps would you take if the local printer had a out of memory error?

Add extra memory to speed up performance.

What are the common features of all printers that is listed in the printer properties box?

Adjust page orientation, resolution, collation, paper sizes, types, and source, manage duplex printing, and print a test page.

Laser Printer Problem: Incomplete characters:

Adjust the printer density.

Print to XPS

An XPS document is a standardized open format and is microsoft's answer to the PDF. It is always offered as a printer type in Windows.

Printers will typically run a ________ routine every time you install new ink cartridges

Calibration

What are the advantages of Impact Printers?

Can print on multi-part farms (like carbon-less receipts) or multiple copies at the same time using impact paper (like carbon paper), continuous tractor feed allows event and data logging, and extremely durable.

Problem solving steps for garbled characters on paper:

Cancel all print jobs in queue and try printing a different document from the same application, print using a different application, is the USB cable securely connected at both ends, power down printer by pressing a reset button, update printer drivers, and printer might need servicing.

How to solve poor print quality for inkjet printers:

Check paper type, check ink levels (remove and install cartridge), follow printer's documentation to clean each nozzle, and clean sponge near carriage rest.

How to solve poor print quality for impact printers:

Check ribbon, replace if needed. Check print head for dirty. Spacing on the print head might need to be adjusted.

What are the two major types of impact printers?

Daisy Wheel and Dot Matrix.

Problem solving steps for printing from Windows or applications problems:

Delete all print jobs in the printer's queue, verify correct printer selected and online, verify cable connections, stop and restart Windows Print Spooler service, delete printer and reinstall, check for updated driver, try to print a file, verify that enough hard drive space is available, and print from Safe Mode.

What are the two types of Thermal Printers?

Direct thermal printer and thermal transfer printer.

What are the benefits of routine cleaning a printer?

Extends the printer's working life.

What are the advantages of Thermal Printers?

Few moving parts so it typically have long lives.

Laser Printer Problem: Dirty Printouts:

Fuser is not reaching proper temperature. Clean printer, try using a lighter-weight paper. If not, change fuser.

Laser Printer Problem: Pulling Multiple Sheets:

Humidity or too much paper.

Laser Printer Problem: Ghosting:

Imaging drum is not fully discharged. Allow some time to cool down or lower the resolution or print in landscape orientation.

What are the four major categories of printers?

Impact, Inkjet, Thermal, and Laser.

Bonjour

Introduced by Apple in 2002; an implementation of zero configuration networking. It's designed to enable automatic discovery of devices and services on local networks using TCP/IP as well as to provide hostname resolution.

AirPrint

Introduced by Apple in 2010; To support printing from iPhones or iPads. No installation process and printing is easy.

What printer works by replacing toner on an electrically charged rotating drum and then depositing the toner on paper as the paper moves through the system at the same speed the drum is turning?

Laser printer

What type of printer connects directly to a computer by way of USB port, parallel port, serial port, or wireless connection?

Local printer

Printers can connect to a local computer or a network through what interfaces?

Local printers connect through USB, wireless, serial or parallel ports. Network printers connect through Wireless or Ethernet.

What are the disadvantages of Impact Printers?

Makes a lot of noise when printing, prints only in black, poor image quality, and slow compared with other types of printers.

Windows Print Management

Monitors and manages printer queues for all printers on a network. Each computer on the network that shares a printer is considered a print server.

Local Network Printing

Moving the print server from your computer to another location, accessible to other users on the network.

Laser Printer Problem: Blank Pages:

Out of toner, try diagnostic print. If not check power supply

What are the components of Laser Printer?

Paper transport, logic circuits, user interface, toner and toner cartridges, photosensitive drum, laser beam, primary corona, transfer corona, fuser rollers, erase lamp, power supply, and the drivers and software.

What are the basic local steps to connecting and installing a printer?

Plug printer into connector into the port or network, turn on the printer, install drivers from manufacturer's program or through Windows Installation Process.

Most local printers are ___-_-___ compatible but all require drivers to communicate with computers.

Plug-n-play

Which program is embdedded in firmware that manages print jobs?

Print Server.

Problem solving steps for shared printer problems:

Print a test page from local computer, verify correct default printer selected and online, at remote computer verify access to the computer to which printed attached, delete printer and reinstall, and verify hard drive space.

How is the print resolution and speed measured in Inkjet Printers?

Print resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi) and print speed in pages per minute (ppm)

Virtual Printers

Printing that is not really printing at all but a way to convert a document to a particular format.

Cloud Printing

Printing to a remote device, one that is not necessarily located on your local network. You are using the internet to spend the print job from your device to the printer which you want the output to come and the printer can be located anywhere in the world.

Print to File

Produces a file that can be later printed w/o access to the program that created it.

Print to PDF

Produces an Adobe PDF instead of a printout. A virtual PDF printer can be downloaded from Adobe or other 3rd party software.

What are Laser Printer features?

Produces high quality and high speed text and graphics, uses toner (more permanent than ink), nonimpact devies that preciously place toner on paper, ranges from low-volume, personal use to high-volume, multiuser use; more expensive to purchase but cheaper to operate. The black tones is typically carbon melt mixed with a polyester resin, while color toner trades carbon for other pigments.

What are the disadvantages of Thermal Printers?

Requires specific expensive paper, paper doesn't last long and the poor image quality.

Laser Printer Problem: Paper jams:

Restart printer of follow steps from manufacturer.

Laser Printer Problem: Creased pages:

Restart printer or try different paper type.

Problem solving steps for wrong print colors:

Some paper is designed to print on only one side, try flipping the paper over, adjust the quality of print, for an inkjet printer try cleaning the ink cartridges and calibrating the printer, and for a laser printer try calibrating the printer.

Print to Image

Somewhat like scanning because it creates an image of the document. It saves into a regular image file like BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF and more.

What are the 3 types of local network printing called?

TCP Printing, Bonjour, and AirPrint

Calibration

The process by which a device is brought within functional specifications.

Describe the characteristics of the Daisy Wheel Impact Printer

These printers contain a wheel with raised letters and symbols on each "petal"; to print a character the printer sends a signal to the print head mechanism that rotates the daisy wheel until the required character is in place; an electromechanical hammer then strikes the back of the petal containing the character; the character pushes up against an inked ribbon that ultimately strikes the paper, making the impression of the requested character; It is rated by the # of characters per second (cps)

Describe the characteristics of the Dot Matrix Impact Printer

These printers work similar to daisy-wheel printers but the print head contains a row of pins; these pins are triggered in patterns that form letters and numbers as the print head moves across the paper; the arrangement of the dots in columns and rows creates the letters and numbers that you see on the page.

Laser Printer Problem: Vertical White Lines:

Toner is clogged. Shake the toner. If not, change it.

Laser Printer Problem: Blotchy print:

Uneven dispersion of toner. Shake the toner. Check fusing rollers and drum for foreign objects.

Before replacing an imagine drum you first should:

Unplug it and allow the printer to cool down.

Problem solving for poor print quality for laser printers:

Unplug printer and allow to cool for 30 mins, rock or replace toner cartridge, EconoMode (use less toner) might be on; turn off, paper quality might not be high enough, printer might need cleaning, ensure printer does not require routine maintenance, laser drum might need replacing, distorted image can be caused by foreign material, if page has a gray background image drum is worn out and needs replacing, ghosted images are usually caused by a problem with the image drum.

What are the features of a Inkjet Printer?

Uses a printhead connected to a carriage that contains the ink; most include multiple print heads, one for each of the CMYK(Cyan, Magneta, Yellow and Black) print inks; a belt and motor move the carriage back and forth so the ink can cover the whole page; the paper-feed mechanism picks up paper from the paper drawer and feeds it into the printer using rollers; sprays ionized ink onto paper to form images using matrix of small dots, then the print head moves across paper as on line of text created in each pass.

Describe a Thermal Printer

Uses heat to create an image and used in point-of-sale terminals.

Problem solving steps for Network connectivity problems:

Verify printer is the default, check printer's IP address, verify printer is online, reboot the computer, uninstall then reinstall the printer, and use diagnostic utilities or software.

When replacing printer paper take into consider:

composition, weight and caliber (thickness) of the sheet of papers.

When cleaning a printer never use:

compressed air or ammonia based cleaners.

Clean outside the printer using a:

damp cloth and outside with a dry cloth.

Embedded Firmware print server can be used to:

manage print jobs, view printer status, see job history, and check counter. Utilities can be accessed through a browser.

TCP Printing

network printer added using TCP/IP. After the printer is installed, it will appear in your Devices and Printers window just as any other printer would.

If loose toner comes out with your printout, the fuser is:

not reaching the proper temperature and professional service is required.

To maintain a printer properly you need to replace consumables such as:

paper, toner or ink cartridges, assemblies, filters, and rollers on occasion.