Print Technologies

How do you clear paper jams in an inkjet printer?

1.Check the paper tray. If you see a piece protruding from where the paper is picked up, pull it out gently. 2.If there is still a jam, remove the rear access door and look into the printer. If you see any paper stuck inside, pull it out, making sure you get all the pieces out. 3.Check the front door of the printer and see whether any pieces are stuck in that section; if so, gently pull them out. 4.At any point in this process you can select the Resume button, and if you have cleared the jam, the print process will resume.

What must be done when replacing a ink cartridge in an inkjet printer?

1.Open the printer cover and locate the button that is used to place the cartridge in the replacement position. 2.Open the cover that may be over the cartridge. 3.Grasp and remove the empty cartridge. 4.Take the new cartridge out of its packaging. 5.Place the new cartridge in the empty position left by the old cartridge. It should click into place. 6.Replace the cartridge cover. 7.Use the same button you used to place the cartridge into the replacement position to move it back to the home position.

What is a 3D printer?

3D printers create objects or parts by joining or solidifying materials under computer control to create a three-dimensional object. Some versions use a data source such as an Additive Manufacturing File (AMF) file (usually in sequential layers).

What do you do when a network printer has no connectivity?

If a network printer is not able to receive jobs, the issue may be with the IP address that it has (or, more correctly, does not have). Often the printer will need to be manually assigned an IP address to make sure that it has the same one each time. Read the manufacturer's documentation for assigning an IP address to the printer and walk through the steps to do so.

What is print to PDF?

If you can print to file, you can print to PDF. In applications that support this feature, it will be an option presented when you select to print. When you select this option, it produces an Adobe PDF instead of a printout. It is a convenient format because you can still print the document later, search it, and send it; and when you do send it, you can be certain that the way the document appears to you will be the way it does to the recipient, regard-less of the device type on which they are viewing it.

What is the difference between impact printers and non-impact printers?

Impact printers physically strike an inked ribbon and therefore can print multipart forms; nonimpact printers deliver ink onto the page without striking it. Dot matrix is impact; all the other printers on the exam are nonimpact.

What is an inkjet printer?

Inkjet printers are one of the most popular types in use today. This type of printer sprays ink on the page to print text or graphics. It's a nonimpact, sheet-fed printer.

What is a rule of thumb when it comes to cleaning?

It is important to keep the printer and the area around it clean. Each time you replace the toner or perform any maintenance, be sure to clean any debris.

What is a laser printer?

Laser printers are referred to as page printers because they receive their print job instructions one page at a time. They're sheet-fed, non-impact printers.

What is the difference between line and page printers?

Line printers print one line at a time; page printers compose the entire page in memory and then place it all on the paper at once. Dot matrix and inkjet are line printers; lasers are page printers.

How do you fix lines and smearing?

Lines and smearing can be caused by the toner cartridge or the fuser. Try replacing the toner first (and cleaning any that may have spilled). If this does not fix the problem, replace the fuser.

What are some important things to note about maintenance kits?

Maintenance kits are marketed by the manufacturer. Each kit varies in contents based on the printer in question but typically consists of a fuser, transfer roller, and feed/separation rollers. A counter on the laser printer often identifies when the maintenance kit is needed, and you can reset the counter after applying the new kit.

What do you do when garbled pages print?

Make sure you're using the right printer driver in your application.

What is a ozone filter?

Many high-capacity laser printers include an ozone filter to prevent the corona's ozone output from reaching too high a level. On these printers, the filter should be changed as part of regular maintenance.

How do you fix error codes?

Many laser printers include LCDs for interaction with the printer. When error codes appear, refer to the manufacturer's manuals or website for information on how to interpret the codes and solve the problem causing them.

Do 3D printers print onto paper?

No, instead 3D printers use rolls of special plastic filament as the material source. This filament comes in various colors.

What are the pickup roller?

Pickup rollers are rubber wheels that grab the paper and feed it in. When these parts get old, they lose their ability to grip the paper, so they should be checked and changed regularly.

What is print to file?

Print to file is quite an old concept by now but still available as an option when printing. When you do this, the information that would normally be sent to the printer is saved, usually as a .prn file. It is a way to avoid the printing process from within an application (which may be time-consuming or inconvenient) and print it (convert it) once and then save the file so that whenever you need a copy, you can simply send that to the printer.

Explain Step 6 of the laser print process.

Step 6: FusingIn the next step, fusing, the toner image is made permanent. The registration rollers push the paper toward the fuser rollers. Once the fuser grabs the paper, the registra-tion rollers push for only a short time more. The fuser is now in control of moving the paper.As the paper passes through the fuser, the fuser roller melts the polyester resin of the toner, and the rubberized pressure roller presses it permanently into the paper. The paper continues on through the fuser and eventually exits the printer.

What is a print head in an impact printer?

The pins in the print head 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 a spring. To trigger a particular pin, the printer controller sends a signal to the print head, 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 ink ribbon and making a dot on the paper.

What is the print head in an inkjet printer?

The print head has a series of nozzles from which the ink is sprayed onto the paper. They may be attached to the ink cartridge, or those two components may be separate. In cases where they are one piece, you will be getting a new print head each time you get a new ink cartridge.

What is a standard thermal printer?

Thermal printer works by using a print head the width of the paper. When it needs to print, the print head heats and cools spots on the print head. The paper below the heated print head turns black in those spots. As the paper moves through the printer, the pattern of blackened spots forms an image on the page of what is being printed.

What is a thermal printer?

Thermal printers can be found in many older fax machines (most newer ones use either inkjet or laser printing) that print on a waxy paper that comes on a roll; the paper turns black when heat passes over it. These are also found on many handheld package tracking and point-of-sale (POS) devices such as credit card terminals. These printers should not be used for documents that need long-term storage as the printed image quickly degrades (disappears) so you are just left with a blank sheet of paper. This is especially true of receipts that need to be retained for tax purposes.

What do you do when dark spots print?

The most likely culprit is too much toner. Run blank pages through the printer to clean it.

What do you do if you have a problem with the ribbon on an impact printer?

A common culprit with poor printing is the ribbon. A tight ribbon, or one that isn't advancing properly, will cause smudges or overly light printout. To solve this problem, replace the ribbon.

What is an impact printer?

A dot-matrix printer is an impact printer; it prints by physically striking an inked ribbon, much like a typewriter. It's an impact, continuous-feed printer.

What is a printer controller in a laser printer?

A large circuit board that acts as the motherboard for the printer. It contains the processor and RAM to convert data coming in from the computer into a picture of a page to be printed.

What is a thermal fuse?

A thermal fuse is included in a laser printer to keep the system from overheating, and if it becomes faulty, it can prevent the printer from printing.

What is print to XPS?

An XPS document is a standardized open format and is Microsoft's answer to the PDF. While Microsoft encourages the use of these documents and of the default XPS device and offers more support for it then for PDF, the document type is not as widely supported elsewhere as the PDF.

What should be done on a thermal printer when the heating element is the suspected culprit?

Before even looking at a heating element, always unplug the printer and make certain it is cool. Thermal printer cleaning cards, cleaning pens, and kits are available and recommended for cleaning.

What do you do if your colors don't look the same or your blacks are getting a bronze look on a inkjet printer?

Clean the nozzles. This can be done with the head cleaning cycle, which will clear out the nozzles.

What is the difference between continuous feed and sheet fed printers?

Continuous-feed paper feeds through the printer using a system of sprockets and tractors. Sheet-fed printers accept plain paper in a paper tray. Dot matrix is continuous feed; everything else is sheet fed.

What do you do when ghosted images print?

Ghosting—repeating text or images on the page—is usually caused by a bad cartridge. There can be damage to the drum or charging roller, and if there is, replacing the cartridge will help with the problem.

What is print to image?

Printing to an image is somewhat like scanning because it creates an image of the document. This typically requires a third-party application. Many of the applications that will create a PDF, such as Nitro PDF Writer, will also allow for you to convert those formats to a jpg file.

What if there are problems with print quality?

See whether your printer has the ability to turn Resolution Enhancement Technology (RET) on and off. This is what allows the printer to use partial-sized dots for images that are rounded. If it's turned off, turn it back on. If there are small marks or defects in the same spot on every page printed, the most likely culprit is a scratch on the drum.

Explain Step 1 of the laser print process.

Step 1: Processing In this step the data is received by the printer software and the images are rendered for the next step.

Explain Step 2 of the laser print process.

Step 2: Charging In the conditioning step, a special wire (called a primary corona or charge corona) within the EP toner cartridge (above the photosensitive drum) gets a high voltage from the HVPS. It uses this high voltage to apply a strong, uniform negative charge (around -600VDC) to the surface of the photosensitive drum.

Explain Step 3 of the laser print process.

Step 3: Exposing In the writing step of the EP process, the laser is turned on and scans the drum from side to side, flashing on and off according to the bits of information the printer controller sends it as it communicates the individual bits of the image. In each area where the laser touches the photosensitive drum, the drum's charge is severely reduced from -600VDC to a slight negative charge (around -100VDC). As the drum rotates, a pattern of exposed areas is formed, representing the image to be printed. At this point, the controller sends a signal to the pickup roller to feed a piece of paper into the printer, where it stops at the registration rollers.

Explain Step 4 of the laser print process.

Step 4: Developing Now that the surface of the drum holds an electrical representation of the image being printed, its discrete electrical charges need to be converted into something that can be transferred to a piece of paper. The EP process's developing step accomplishes this. In this step, toner is transferred to the areas that were exposed in the writing step.

Explain Step 5 of the laser print process.

Step 5: Transferring At this point in the EP process, the developed image is rotating into position. The controller notifies the registration rollers that the paper should be fed through. The registration rollers move the paper underneath the photosensitive drum, and the process of transferring the image can begin with the transferring step. The controller sends a signal to the corona wire or corona roller (depending on which one the printer has) and tells it to turn on. The corona wire/roller then acquires a strong positive charge (+600VDC) and applies 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 the paper because the paper and toner have opposite charges. Once the registration rollers move the paper past the corona wire, the static-eliminator strip removes all charge from that line of the paper. If the strip didn't bleed this charge away, the paper would attract itself to the toner cartridge and cause a paper jam. The toner is now held in place by weak electrostatic charges and gravity. It won't stay there, however, unless it's made permanent, which is the reason for the fusing step.

Explain Step 7 of the laser print process.

Step 7: Cleaning In the last part of the laser print process, a rubber blade inside the EP cartridge scrapes any toner left on the drum into a used-toner receptacle inside the EP cartridge, and a fluorescent lamp discharges any remaining charge on the photosensitive drum (remember that the drum, being photosensitive, loses its charge when exposed to light). The EP cartridge is constantly cleaning the drum. It may take more than one rotation of the photosensitive drum to make an image on the paper. The cleaning step keeps the drum fresh for each use. If you didn't clean the drum, you would see ghosts of previous pages printed along with your image.

What is the carriage and belt function in an inkjet printer?

The carriage holds the ink cartridges, and it uses a belt to move the entire piece across the paper as it is printing. As it prints, it uses ink from the various cartridges in whatever pro-portion is necessary to create the desired colors.

What is an ink cartridge in an inkjet printer?

The cartridges contain the ink. Some cartridges contain the print head for that color of ink; you get a new print head each time you replace the cartridge. On other printer models, the ink cartridge is just an ink reservoir, and the heads don't need replacing.

What is the feeder in an inkjet printer?

The feeder looks like a tray and is where you load paper. It is from here that it is pulled into the printer when a new sheet is required. These feeders do not usually hold as much paper as a tray in a printer will.

What is the heating element in a thermal printer?

The heating element for a thermal printer is what generates the heat and does the actual printing. It is often the most expensive component.

What do you do if you have a problem with the print head on an impact printer?

The print head should never be lubricated, but you can clean off debris with a cotton swab and denatured alcohol. Print pins missing from the print head will cause incomplete images or characters or white lines running through the text. This can be remedied by replacing the print head. If the print head isn't at fault, make certain it's close enough to the platen to make the right image. The print head can be moved closer and farther from the platen (the surface on which typing occurs) depending on the thickness of the paper and other considerations.

What is a ribbon in an impact printer?

The ribbon is like that on an old typewriter. Most impact printers have an option to adjust how close the print head rests from the ribbon. So if your printing is too light, you may be able to adjust the print head closer to the ribbon. If it's too dark or you get smeared printing, you may be able to move the print head back.

What is an imaging drum in a laser printer?

The toner cartridge and drum are typically packaged together as a consumable product that contains the toner. The drum is light sensitive; it can be written to with the laser scanning assembly.

What are tractor feeds?

The tractor feed unit feeds in the continuous feed paper. This paper has holes running down both edges.

What are the 2 types on inkjet printers?

There are two kinds of inkjet printers: thermal and piezoelectric. These terms refer to the way the ink is sprayed onto the paper. A thermal inkjet printer heats the ink to about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, creating vapor bubbles that force the ink out of the cartridge. Thermal inkjets are also sometimes called bubble jets. A piezoelectric printer does the same thing but with electricity instead of heat.

What is virtual printing?

There is also virtual printing, which is not really printing at all but a way to convert a document to a particular format. There are a number of ways this conversion can take place.

What are the separate pads?

These pads are used to separate sheets in a stack of printing paper. It does this as the paper passes over them by creating friction that separates the paper. These pads are usually 2 to 3 inches wide, and when they start to wear out, they lose their ability to create friction, and you start getting two and three sheets at a time pulled through.

What is the primary corona (charge corona) in a laser printer?

This applies a uniform negative charge (around -600V) to the drum at the beginning of the printing cycle.

What is the transfer corona?

This applies a uniform positive charge (about +600V) to the paper. When the paper rotates past the drum, the toner is pulled off the drum and onto the paper. Then the paper passes through a static eliminator that removes the positive charge from it. Some printers use a transfer corona wire; others use a transfer corona roller.

What is the DC power supply?

This delivers lower voltages to components in the printer that need much lower voltages than the corona wires do (such as circuit boards, memory, and motors).

What is the high-voltage power supply (HVPS)?

This delivers the high voltages needed to make the printing process happen. It converts ordinary 120V household AC current into high-DC voltages used to energize the primary and transfer corona wires.

What is a thermal wax transfer printer?

This is a color, nonimpact printer that uses a solid wax. A heater melts the wax and then sprays it onto the page, somewhat like an inkjet. The quality is very high, but so is the price.

What is a dye sublimation printer?

This is another color, nonimpact line printer. This one converts a solid ink into a gas that is then applied to the paper. Color is applied in a continuous tone, rather than individual dots, and the colors are applied one at a time. The ink comes on film rolls. The paper is expensive, as is the ink. Print speeds are low. The quality is extremely high.

What do you do if you see white repeating lines or a grid-like pattern in the printing?

This means the head is misaligned. While some newer printers have an automatic alignment and cleaning function, you may need to do this manually using the printer documentation.

What is the paper transport assembly (transfer belt, transfer roller) in a laser printer?

This moves the paper through the printer. The paper transport assembly consists of a motor and several rubberized rollers and transfer belts. These rollers are operated by an electronic stepper motor.

What is the laser scanning assembly?

This uses a laser beam to neutralize the strong negative charge on the drum in certain areas, so toner will stick to the drum in those areas. The laser scanning assembly uses a set of rotating and fixed mirrors to direct the beam.

What kind of paper is needed for a thermal printer?

To print with a thermal printer, you need to use heat-sensitive paper designed for the thermal printer as opposed to paper for any other type of printer. Rolls of thermal paper are available in a variety of sizes and colors.

What is toner in a laser printer?

Toner is a powdery mixture of plastic resin and iron oxide. The plastic allows it to be melted and fused to the paper, and the iron oxide allows it to be moved around via positive or negative charge.

What should be done when replacing toner?

Use toner that is recommended for your printer. Using bad supplies could ruin your printer and void your warranty. Remove the toner before moving or shipping a printer to avoid spills.

How do you fix the blank pages printing problem?

Verify that there is toner in the cartridge. If it's an old cartridge, you can often shake it slightly to free up toner once before replacing. If it's a new cartridge, make sure the sealing tape has been removed from the cartridge prior to placing it in the printer.

How do you fix out-of-memory error?

While PCs now may need a minimum of 1 GB of RAM to run at a base level, it is not uncommon to find printers that still have only 4 MB or 8 MB of memory. If you are routinely running out of memory on a printer, add more memory if possible, and replace the printer when it is no longer possible to do so.

How do you fix paper jams?

While paper jams can be caused by numerous problems, two common ones are the paper not feeding correctly and moisture. To correct improper feeds, make sure you set the alignment guides for the paper you are using and verify that the paper is feeding in straight. Keep the paper from getting any moisture before feeding into the printer because moisture often causes pages to stick together and bind. Paper jams can also be caused by using paper that is not approved for the printer—particularly thick cardstock. Regardless of the cause of a paper jam, you need to always fully clear the printer of any traces of paper (torn or whole) before attempting to print again.

What is calibration and how is it done?

With laser printers and inkjets, there is often a need to calibrate. Calibration is the process by which the result produced matches what was created. All the hardware, including the monitor, scanner, and printer, need to match on color, margins, and so forth. The calibration process is different for each manufacturer but is usually similar in the following ways: 1.During installation of the software, you are asked (by the installation wizard) if you want to calibrate now (say Yes). 2.The printer prints multiple sets of numbered lines. Each set of lines represents an alignment instance, and you are asked which set looks the best. 3.You enter the set number and click OK. In some cases, the alignment ends here. In other cases, the alignment page is reprinted to verify that the settings are correct, and you are given a chance to change. 4.You exit the alignment routine