Line printers and laser printers operate on opposite ends of the output spectrum. If your company rarely prints multipart forms, a line printer is probably unnecessary. A laser printer, on the other hand, is not the best tool if all of your output is paperwork that needs to be distributed across multiple departments. Except for the word “printer,” these two types of hardware have almost nothing in common other than the ability to print information on paper.
Impact Printer
As each correct letter, number, or punctuation formed into a continuous matrix of characters on a chain, band, or rotating cylinder reaches the proper position across the width of a sheet of paper, line printers strike the paper with hammers. The line matrix printer, a later variation on this impact technology, uses a bidirectional shuttle with dot hammers that contact the paper instead of fully formed characters. Band and line matrix printers can both produce high-speed output at speeds of more than 60 pages per minute.
Page Printer
Laser printers image a full sheet at a time by sprinkling a powdered mixture onto a drum in the shape of a page’s content. The drum has a positive charge that is reversed by a laser, allowing the mixture to adhere for just long enough to transfer onto a negatively charged piece of paper. The image is held in place by a heat source known as a fuser. Some colour printers apply each of the four colours separately (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black); others combine the colours and apply them in a single pass.
Ribbon
Line printers, like all impact printers, use a single-color ribbon as their image source, producing output that can reach nearly 200 dots per inch. Because their type chains, bands, or cylinders only include complete characters, true line printers produce output that is entirely composed of letters, numbers, and punctuation. Monochrome graphics can be produced by line matrix printers. The ribbon creates the first multipart copy, with the copies behind it created by the impact on encapsulated ink or carbons.
Toner
Laser printers use a combination of plastic and pigment to produce monochrome or full-color output at resolutions of up to and beyond 1,200 dots per inch, rivalling the clarity and definition of a printing press. Because of their ability to reproduce line-screened output, they can create a variety of colours by combining different sizes of dots in their primary toner colors. Because of the strength of the heat-set bond between toner and paper, laser output is impervious to water, light, and even friction. Because laser output has no impact, laser devices only make copies by printing multiple iterations of the same document page.
