CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 5Supporting Printers and Scanners

Suraya Alias

How printers and scanners workHow printers and scanners work

Local printers and scanners are connected using USB port, parallel port, serial port, wireless connection (Bluetooth, infrared or WIFI), IEEE 1394(Firewire) port, SCSI port, PC Card and ExpressCard connection or by using the network printers

2 categories of printer:1. Impact printer (uses impact on the paper)

1. dot matrix printer2. Non-impact printer – laser, ink jet, solid ink, dye

sublimation, thermal printer

Types of PrinterTypes of Printer

Laser printer ◦ Works by placing toner on an electrically charged rotating drum and then depositing the toner on papers as the paper moves through the system at the same speed the drum is turning

6 steps of laser printing

1. Cleaning 4. Developing2. Conditioning 5.Transferring3. Writing 6. Fusing

Types of PrinterTypes of Printer Cleaning. The drum is

cleaned of any residual toner and electrical charge.

Conditioning. The drum is conditioned to contain a high electrical charge.

Writing. a laser beam discharges a lower charge only the places where toner should go.

Developing. Toner is placed on the drum where the charge has been reduced.

Transferring. A strong electrical charge draws the toner off the drum onto the paper. This is the first step that takes place outside the cartridge.

Fusing. Heat and pressure fuse the toner to the paper.

Types of PrinterTypes of Printer

Ink jet printers ◦ Use a type of ink-dispersion

printing◦ Quality not as good as laser,

but small and can print color photos

◦ Can include one or more ink cartridges

◦ An ink jet printer uses a print head that moves across the paper, creating one line of text with each pass.

◦ It puts the ink on paper using a matrix of small dots

◦ Example: Bubble jet printer

Types of PrinterTypes of Printer Dot Matrix Printers

◦ Still be used because1) Impact printers can print

multicopy documents2) It last forever

It has a print head that moves across the width of the paper, using pins to print a matrix dots on the page

The pins shoot against a cloth ribbon which hits the paper, depositing the ink

The ribbon provides both the ink for printing and the lubrication for the pinheads

Types of PrinterTypes of Printer Thermal Printer and Solid Ink

Printers ◦ Non-impact printers that uses

heat to produce printed output◦ Thermal printer uses wax-

based ink that is heated by heat pins that melt the ink onto paper

◦ Used for printing bar codes and price tags

◦ A dye sublimation printer uses solid dyes embedded on different transparent films

◦ Solid ink printers uses ink stored in solid blocks, which Xerox calls color sticks

◦ The solid ink is melted into the print head, which spans the width of the paper and the head jets the liquid ink onto paper as it passes by on a drum

Installing a local printerInstalling a local printer

By running the printer driver setup CDIn Win XP, control Panel->Printers And

Faxes -> Add a printer -> Add printer wizard

Sharing a printer in a workgroup◦Right click the printer -> sharing -> share this

printer, enter a name

Printer LanguagePrinter Language

The printer uses Postscript commands to build page

Uses PCL (Printer Control Language) commands to build the page

The Windows GDI (Graphics Device Interface) builds the page and then sends it to the printer

Raw data is printed with little-to-no formatting

Printer ManagementPrinter Management

From the Printers and Faxes window you can delete printer, change windows default printer, purge print jobs, delete jobs

Printer maintenance◦Printer consumable◦Printer maintenance kits◦Cleaning a printer◦Online support for printer◦Updating printer firmware

Troubleshooting – printerTroubleshooting – printer

Printer does not print◦Check the printer itself◦Check the connectivity between pc and local

printer◦Check the connectivity between pc and

network printer◦The OS and printer drivers◦The application attempting to use the printer

Troubleshooting – laser printerTroubleshooting – laser printer

Poor print quality or low toner message displayed

Printers stays in warm up modeA paper jam occurs or paper out of messageOne or more white streaks appear in the printPrint appears speckledPrinted images are distortedPrinting is slowA portion of the page does not print

Supporting ScannersSupporting Scanners

To install a scanner, run setup CD, older pc maybe need a reboot to launch the new hardware wizard

Scanner maintenance◦ Check the configuration

for best resolution, output type etc

◦ Check for destination folders, file format and image quality