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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com, brought to
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at How Stuff Works, and today I
Speaker 1: have sitting across the table from me is Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: one of our writers. How d well you know, I
Speaker 1: wanted to know if anybody out there is interested in
Speaker 1: an old daisy wheel printer. I have one. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll uh, I'll get swept up immediately on eBay. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we were going to talk about printers today, down about
Speaker 1: different kinds of printers and how they work. And uh,
Speaker 1: I actually do, indeed have a daisy wheel printer at home,
Speaker 1: which is basically a typewriter. For those of you who
Speaker 1: are too young to remember what a typewriter is, it
Speaker 1: basically is a keyboard at type to a printer directly
Speaker 1: talk about your wireless printers. Uh, you know that that's
Speaker 1: about as wireless as it gets. But early printers used
Speaker 1: a wheel with the letters printed in metal. Uh, sort
Speaker 1: of reverse type and it would you know, as you typed. Uh.
Speaker 1: This the one I've got actually has a keyboard that
Speaker 1: hooks up to it. If you didn't have a computer yet, uh,
Speaker 1: and you could actually print it out, it would it would.
Speaker 1: The daisy wheel spins and it literally does look sort
Speaker 1: of like a metallic daisy because it each key has
Speaker 1: its own pin and it goes and hits the ribbon
Speaker 1: and you know, types out a letter for you the
Speaker 1: paper that transfers the ink to the paper and woila,
Speaker 1: you have the printed word. There you go and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's about as simple, I guess a printer as
Speaker 1: you can get in one of the earliest types. But
Speaker 1: you don't see them very often anything. No, Gully, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine why my my father has a dot matrix
Speaker 1: printer still at his house, which serves as a great
Speaker 1: paper weight. Um, because they're quite heavy. Dot matrix are similar.
Speaker 1: That's a Uh. These are the kind of printers we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, are impact printers, meaning that they
Speaker 1: there's a physical impact that uh that where something contacts
Speaker 1: the sheet of paper and that's what makes the the
Speaker 1: printed letter. With dot matrix, it's a series of pins
Speaker 1: that that when they strike the ribbon, that's what forms
Speaker 1: the letters. So they don't have each letter laid out
Speaker 1: on a on a metal sheet or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just little tiny pins that all hit at the
Speaker 1: same time. So um, yeah, you don't see many of
Speaker 1: those anymore either. These are not also these if you
Speaker 1: have ever used one of these, they have a very
Speaker 1: distinctive sound. Um and they also the paper tended to
Speaker 1: be pretty annoying too, as I recall, most of them
Speaker 1: were in those long, long, long sheets where you'd have
Speaker 1: to tear it off at the end with the green
Speaker 1: and yellow stripes with the right perforated the perforated edges
Speaker 1: where it with the holes that would go into Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that was Those were nightmare to work with, trust me.
Speaker 1: Although you could make some nice origami with the stuff
Speaker 1: that you had to tear off those papers. But but
Speaker 1: but that's that's sort of in the past. Or there's
Speaker 1: still lots of industries that use impact printers because they're
Speaker 1: relatively inexpensive and and uh, you know, they last for
Speaker 1: a pretty long time. You do have to do maintenance
Speaker 1: on them. But most people have moved to non impact printers,
Speaker 1: and the two main versions of that. The two one
Speaker 1: to that you find most in the in the UH
Speaker 1: consumer market and even in the office environment are ink
Speaker 1: jet printers and laser printers. Right, yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: I mean there there are other types to uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and run through them so we can
Speaker 1: get them out of the way, so other forms of
Speaker 1: non impact printers. I kind of wish we had like
Speaker 1: background music for this. Who knows, maybe our producer Jerry
Speaker 1: will figure something out, so we'll have a little little
Speaker 1: mood to here to set up the atmosphere. Actually, I've
Speaker 1: I've prepared a power point so if you could all
Speaker 1: imagine what it looks like as you are listening to
Speaker 1: us talk, and you know that it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's it is stunning. I don't know how he got
Speaker 1: this color saturation, tell you the truth. But um, let's
Speaker 1: start with all right, we have a solid ink printers um,
Speaker 1: which I think you are going to talk about a
Speaker 1: little bit later because you have some sort of weird
Speaker 1: fascination with solid ink. Yeah. Well, it's just one of
Speaker 1: those things that's sort of really cool. Anyway, you were
Speaker 1: going to talk about kind of prints. We'll go back
Speaker 1: to it all right. You have the die sublimation printers,
Speaker 1: which uses transparent film to transfer ink to paper. Um,
Speaker 1: that uses a heat to do that. Um. There's thermal
Speaker 1: wax printers, which are kind of the combination of die
Speaker 1: sublimation and solid inc You've got thermal autochrome printers, and
Speaker 1: that's where you have the ink in the paper already
Speaker 1: and you just use heat to make the income to
Speaker 1: make letters visible. So these are your other forms. Now,
Speaker 1: those are kind of they make up a minority of
Speaker 1: all the non impact printers that are on the market.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the two biggies are ink jet and
Speaker 1: laser printers. Now, did you want to talk about solid
Speaker 1: ink before we move on? Well, you know, solid ink
Speaker 1: is fascinating to me simply because, uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty simple. Um, when you're loading your and
Speaker 1: then we're talking about color printers here, so it's not
Speaker 1: just you know, black, you can actually use a color
Speaker 1: printer and instead of putting in a plastic cartridge filled
Speaker 1: with a liquid ink or putting powdered toner in like
Speaker 1: you were with an ink jet or a laser respectively. Um,
Speaker 1: you actually use a block of solid ink it's sort
Speaker 1: of it sort of looks like a giant square crayon,
Speaker 1: or some of them aren't even square. Um, this is
Speaker 1: a Xerox thing. I mean, it's it's Xerox's baby there
Speaker 1: as far as I know. The only ones who actually
Speaker 1: manufacture these, um, but they're pretty cool. They don't use
Speaker 1: any cartridges. What it does is essentially it it melts
Speaker 1: um this resin based non toxic ink uh and use
Speaker 1: the uh. The ink it goes on the print head,
Speaker 1: which transfers it onto the print drum. So when the
Speaker 1: paper goes through the printer, the print drum actually transfers
Speaker 1: the image onto their using heat and pressure. So that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of a different technique to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: spraying it, which was which is what you do with
Speaker 1: ink jetsing jet printers make you know, complete sense from
Speaker 1: hearing your name. It's a jet of ink being sprayed
Speaker 1: onto the paper to make letters or pictures or whatever.
Speaker 1: It is, right, and um, it's it's a spray that's
Speaker 1: very very fine, a very fine spray. The the drops
Speaker 1: are tend to be between fifty and sixty microns in diameter,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty small human hair. Something I don't know
Speaker 1: much about is about the diameter of seventy microns umpholically challenged.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so these are very tiny dots that
Speaker 1: that come out in in really fast bursts, so several
Speaker 1: bursts per second. I mean, it's it's it's remarkably fast.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's so fast that that to us usually
Speaker 1: if you see a piece of paper going into an
Speaker 1: inkjet printer, a good inkjet printer, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: constantly moving. It's really starting and stopping, but it's doing
Speaker 1: it at such a high speed that it it looks
Speaker 1: like it's a constant movement. But yeah, you have all
Speaker 1: these little tiny nozzles in an ink jet printer that
Speaker 1: that emit the ink, and um they do it in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways. Um so, but that's that's
Speaker 1: the basic principle behind it. Eventually, the the when the
Speaker 1: paper comes out, the ink dries, uh and you've got
Speaker 1: your your printed page. As opposed to say the solid
Speaker 1: inc format where you actually let the ink cool. It's
Speaker 1: it's almost like like a candle, like if you melted
Speaker 1: the candle and then let the wax cool and it
Speaker 1: solidifies again. That's sort of the the way solid ink works,
Speaker 1: whereas the ink jet type stuff it it just kind
Speaker 1: of dries. So that's what you end up with the
Speaker 1: letters on the page speaking of which is not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you want to get wet, right, because
Speaker 1: speaking from personal experience, if you are working on something
Speaker 1: and you like a spill your coffee on it or
Speaker 1: something or glass water, you're pretty much going to ruin
Speaker 1: an ink jet printed page. I think they've gotten. It
Speaker 1: depends on paper and and things that you know, depending
Speaker 1: on how well it soaks in, and of course, depending
Speaker 1: on how well it soaks in, you can really splotchy
Speaker 1: pages just from the ink jet printing on it. Early
Speaker 1: ink jet that was bad about that. I had to
Speaker 1: use a certain quality of paper with a certain amount
Speaker 1: of clay content for it to actually show up and
Speaker 1: not uh completely seep in and make a giant blob
Speaker 1: in the middle of the page. Yeah, you can see
Speaker 1: that in even high quality printers. If you don't, if
Speaker 1: you don't maintain them and clean them often enough, then
Speaker 1: you're going to have some some smearing issues. With ink jets,
Speaker 1: the nozzles can clog to exact problems. And there's two
Speaker 1: different two different kinds of of nozzles. We might as
Speaker 1: well those as well. There's the thermal bubble nozzle, which
Speaker 1: of course bubble jet right exactly. The bubble jet for
Speaker 1: the subset of the ink jet family creates a small
Speaker 1: bubble with the bubble burst that creates a vacuum, draws
Speaker 1: in through the nozzles, sprays on the paper. Really exciting
Speaker 1: science stuff. The other one is even more science if
Speaker 1: you can believe it. Settle yourself here it goes the
Speaker 1: piezo electric crystal method um. Now, piece of electric crystal.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of crystal that if you run an
Speaker 1: electric charge through it, it changes shape and vice versa.
Speaker 1: If you change the shape of the crystal, it emits
Speaker 1: an electric charge. These are the sort of crystals that
Speaker 1: are in things like like like watches to keep time
Speaker 1: because they're they're very they're very predictable. You know, depending
Speaker 1: on the material you're talking about, you can you know
Speaker 1: exactly how it's going to change shape depending on how
Speaker 1: much of an electrical charge you pass through it. So
Speaker 1: in this case, these crystals kind of act as a
Speaker 1: valve for the nozzle and as the printer runs an
Speaker 1: electric charge through it, it it allows inc to pass through
Speaker 1: or blocks inc from passing through and that's how those work. So, um,
Speaker 1: I guess we can move on over to the most
Speaker 1: dangerous printer in the world, the laser jet laser printer.
Speaker 1: These also use UH positive and negative electrical charges to
Speaker 1: help with the printing process. Um i've i've actually a
Speaker 1: little uncertain as too much charge. But the initially the
Speaker 1: drum inside the printer, which is a smaller version of
Speaker 1: the one you might see if you watch a video
Speaker 1: about how they make UH newspapers or magazines. You see
Speaker 1: these giant H drums rotating on a press. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a smaller version of that inside your the laser printer
Speaker 1: sitting on your desk or you know, down the hall
Speaker 1: at your at your workplace. And basically they charge the
Speaker 1: drum and put toner on the drum and a laser
Speaker 1: passes over it and when the paper goes through, it
Speaker 1: gets the opposite electrical charge and that helps transfer the
Speaker 1: image onto the paper. Right, the laser just provides the
Speaker 1: the correct charge to the right spots on the toner,
Speaker 1: so that way the toner that has charged that way
Speaker 1: will will transfer. All the rest of the toner won't transfer,
Speaker 1: because otherwise all you would end up with is you know,
Speaker 1: sheet completely covered in toner. So it's kind of neat
Speaker 1: that they're using lasers to do this. That it's this
Speaker 1: this really precise way to um to transfer inc from
Speaker 1: the drum onto the page. And then after the that
Speaker 1: that goes on the drum rotates another lamp, a very
Speaker 1: powerful lamp is shown on the drum itself, which clears
Speaker 1: the charge, so it prepares it for the next page.
Speaker 1: Because if you didn't do that, then you would end
Speaker 1: up with ghost images of previous pages. So you would
Speaker 1: end up seeing like everything on page page two, you
Speaker 1: would start to see a little ghost images of stuff
Speaker 1: from page one, and then page three, the page one
Speaker 1: images would be slightly lighter, but then you'd also have
Speaker 1: the page two and it would be a big mess.
Speaker 1: So you have to have a way to clear the
Speaker 1: drum after each sheet, and that's how they do it.
Speaker 1: They use this um this lamp to to to clear it.
Speaker 1: And then as one last step before the page leaves
Speaker 1: the printer, it goes through what's called a fuser, which
Speaker 1: essentially melds the I really wanted to use the word
Speaker 1: meld um. That melds the toner on into the paper fibers,
Speaker 1: so basically it you know, fuses it together, glues it
Speaker 1: together on there, so it appears in those letters until
Speaker 1: you put it in a vinyl notebook, leave it there
Speaker 1: for a while, then peel it off to find all
Speaker 1: the dinner and stuck on the vinyl, and now you
Speaker 1: have it when your notebook and reverse. Wow again. I
Speaker 1: know this from personal experience. I was detecting a little
Speaker 1: note of bitterness in that which one is better for which? What?
Speaker 1: If you if you're looking for crisp colors, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for speed, you know what which printer is best
Speaker 1: for which application? In general, I think laser printers tend
Speaker 1: to be the fastest. Um. They're the you're they're usually
Speaker 1: faster than your ink jets. Uh. Although if you're printing
Speaker 1: a lot um and you're printing in a hurry, you
Speaker 1: should also be careful because those pages come out awfully
Speaker 1: hot from the user. If you're if you're running a
Speaker 1: pretty powerful printer, I speak from personal experience of the press,
Speaker 1: Yes exactly, it is literally hot off the press. You
Speaker 1: can you could actually scort yourself a little. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the paper is moving really fast with the fuser, so
Speaker 1: it won't. It won't normally scort, unless, of course, something
Speaker 1: has gone horribly wrong with your laser printer, in which
Speaker 1: case that could theoretically happen. Um. But yeah, I seem
Speaker 1: to I find laser printers to be to be the
Speaker 1: best if you're looking for something like a high quantity
Speaker 1: print job. If you're printing something that's like, say you're
Speaker 1: printing reports, and you're printing out a hundred reports, and
Speaker 1: each reports sporting pages long, a laser printer is gonna
Speaker 1: do it a lot faster than an ink jet. Um
Speaker 1: or your local copy center, Well, your local copy center
Speaker 1: is very likely using a laser printer, so so it's
Speaker 1: still the same. I doubt that they've got the Guttenberg
Speaker 1: press back there, so um, so I would go with
Speaker 1: laser most of the time. I mean now, granted, for
Speaker 1: my own personal use, I have an ink jet because
Speaker 1: I don't tend to do high volume print jobs, so
Speaker 1: it's and a jet. The qualities nice. Uh um. The
Speaker 1: cartridges aren't too terribly expensive, so that's what I stick with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can. That's what you find for your your photo printers,
Speaker 1: your digital photo printers, exact. The quality of the images
Speaker 1: is considerably better. Well, I think we've we've we're all
Speaker 1: printed out. I think we should we should lay this
Speaker 1: one to bed. So, if you guys want to learn
Speaker 1: more about printers, you should read how inkjet printers work
Speaker 1: and how Laser printers Work, both of which are live
Speaker 1: right now on how stuff works dot com. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know Steve Gutenberg had a prints. I'm gonna hit
Speaker 1: you so hard. Let us know what you think. Send
Speaker 1: an email to podcast and how stuff works dot com,
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