Personal printers: everything you need to know

Although the change from analog to digital has been a powerful blow to many peripherals and accessories for computers, one of the ones that is still present today with more presence both professionally and personally, is the printer. This heir to modern printing has been with us since the very beginning of computer science and has evolved with her. Today we want to dedicate a few words to the most homely face of the device and bring you everything you need to know about personal printers.

Index of contents

What exactly is a printer

In such a text, it is always good to start by defining what exactly we are talking about. In the world of computing, we call the output peripheral printer that, through data stored in an electronic format, makes a physical copy of it through a physical medium, usually paper.

Image: Flickr, Christian Colen

Along with monitors and audio output devices, they are the most widespread output peripherals and one of the most historical ones within this medium; Due to this, there have been various iterations and evolutions of the peripheral over the years, as well as the means through which it communicates with our teams.

The different types of printer

The personal printers, in which we will focus on this writing, are designed to operate with a single computer and perform light printing jobs, although this capacity depends entirely on the type of printer we are talking about.

Due to its large number of variants and models throughout its history, there are several ways to classify the different types of printers that we can find. These methods vary from printing capacity to the language used by the printer; one of the ones that best categorize the different models that exist is the classification according to their printing method. The most widespread are:

Toner printing

One of the most widely used printing methods today is the one that involves the use of toner cartridges (dry ink powder) in your printing process. This is done by adhering the toner pigments by means of electrostatic attraction, to be fixed later by heat and pressure. This process is called Xerography .

Printers that use this method are lasers and LEDs; semi-professional models for offices and studios (AIO printers) also fall into this category. Their print quality is good, their cost per copy is relatively low, and they are very fast, making them a very popular choice.

The first laser printing devices saw the light in the early 1970s, at the legendary technology company Xerox, although Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Apple would be responsible for creating the first models accessible to the general public, promoting their expansion.

Thermal printing

Twinned with those of the previous section by the use of Xerography we find thermal printers. They are based on the use of a heat-sensitive paper that, on contact, turns color; The printer takes advantage of this property to apply heat to specific points on the paper, running through it to capture the information to be printed. They are used for ATMs, tickets and photographs, the latter using resin printing ribbons.

Dye sublimation printing

Among the thermal printers, we would have to see are the printers based on sublimation ink. These devices use heat to transfer the ink onto the final document from printing ribbons. They are commonly used for high quality photo printing.

Inkjet printing

Another of the most popular methods to carry out the printing of a document is by means of the injection of ink ( InkJet printers), which consists of the application of small amounts of ink on the surface to be printed. This process is carried out by means of thermal or piezoelectric injection; Since both results offer very high color accuracy and quality, inkjet printers are often used for printing photos as well as documents.

Image: Flickr, Frankieleon

Due to their easy production they are usually affordable, although the cost per copy skyrockets compared to that of toner due to the use of ink cartridges.

Its production began in the 1950s, although it would not be until the 1970s, with the products of Canon and Epson, that its popularization began.

Impact printing

Based on the impact mechanism that enables writing on a classic typewriter we have impact printers. These devices work by tapping a print head with ink against the paper, which leaves the corresponding mark on the paper.

Depending on how this head is, we could classify them as a classic impact printer or a dot matrix printer. In the latter, what impacts the ink on the paper is a roller with a pre-established composition through a matrix of many points (pixels) that, when distributed in a certain way, form a larger complex image; the roller passes over the paper, engraving the ink.

Dot-matrix printers were created by IBM in the late 1950s and for many years were the highest quality standard for text printing.

3d print

Although it does not fall into the same categories in which we would catalog the printers named so far, and they would need their own text given their peculiarities, we did not want to miss the opportunity to mention 3D printers.

Image: Flickr, Its-Izzy

Primarily used in creative or industrial settings, 3D printers are output devices that create a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model. The properties of this model depend a lot on the type of 3D printer, and this is closely related to the printing material, which varies from alloys to polymers.

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The connections of our printers

Another of the sections that characterize these devices and that has changed the most over time is the connection interface used to communicate with our equipment. Currently, the one that is most present is the wired connection via USB, or via Wifi if we talk about wireless connection. However, this has not always been the case, and a few years ago buses like the parallel port were the norm.

Some connections for extended printers in your day. USB is the current favorite.

Featured among different types of printer

Having seen the different types of printers, we want to dedicate a space to talk about the characteristics that they share, or differentiate, many of them. Of the multiple factors to highlight, we would like to focus on three: color, speed and resolution.

• Color is an important element when representing the information of certain documents, such as photographs or layouts. The printers that best work with color and are affordable for the average user are those of injection (Cartridges CMYK) and those of sublimation (Ribbons of sublimation), although this varies greatly depending on the range on which we move. Speed is one of the main factors to consider when we need a large number of copies per day. Less capable printers typically rotate around 5 copies per minute. Both toner printers (laser and led) and impact printers are positioned as the fastest; but they are the first, and more specifically lasers, which offer us the best cost per copy, in addition to providing better results. Resolution is another important element, they define the sharpness of the print and are usually measured in dpi ( dots-per-inch ). From 600 to 700 dpi is usually the standard in personal printers, but the number increases as rises between the different ranges available.

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If you want to know more about this peripheral, we invite you to read our article on the best printers on the market today, where we discuss models and show their characteristics.