Ink

An ink is a liquid containing various pigments and/or dyes used for coloring a surface to render an image or text.

Inkjet Printer

Inkjet printers are a type of printer that works by spraying ionized ink at a sheet of paper. Magnetized plates in the ink's path direct the ink onto the paper in the desired shapes. Inkjet printers are the most common type of computer printer. They are usually inexpensive, quiet, reasonably fast, and many models can produce high quality output. They are a popular choice for home users and small businesses. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Epson, and Lexmark. Technology

Label Printer

A label printer is a computer peripheral that prints on self-adhesive label material and sometimes card-stock. Label printers are different from ordinary printers because they need to have special feed mechanisms to handle rolled stock, or tear sheet (fanfold) stock.

Laser printer

A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. Like photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.

Monochrome Printer

A monochrome printer can only produce an image consisting of one color, usually black. A monochrome printer may also be able to produce graduations of tone of that color, such as a grey-scale.

Multifunction Printer

A multifunction printer is a single device that serves several functions, including printing. Typically, multifunction printers can act as a printer, a scanner, a fax machine and a photocopier.

Pigmented Inks

Pigmented inks contain agents that ensure adhesion of the pigment to the surface and prevent it from being removed by mechanical abrasion. These materials are typically referred to as resins (in solvent-based inks) or binding agents (in water-based inks). Pigmented inks are advantageous when printing on paper because the pigment stays on the surface of the paper. This is desirable because more ink on the surface of the paper means less ink needs to be used to create the same intensity of color.

Printer Ribbon

An inked strip of cloth used for making an impression, as in a typewriter. Examples, thermal printer ribbons, dot matrix printer ribbons, point of sale printer ribbons, etc.

Printhead

A printhead is the device in an inkjet printer which sprays droplets of ink onto a sheet of paper. Most desktop inkjet printers use cartridges that come with the print head attached; a few printers have separate print heads next to which the ink cartridge is inserted.

Thermal printer

A thermal printer uses heat to transfer an impression onto paper. There are thermal wax transfer printers which adhere a wax-based ink onto paper. More commonly there are direct thermal printers which print the image by burning dots onto coated paper when the paper pases ofer the heating elements. This printer is mostly used for point of sale systems.