Questions about Dot Matrix Printers

In article ,
says...
There were some thermal dot matrix printers. Suspect some mechanisms
are still made, used for labels, etc. specialty.

Thermal printers are still very common, although most don't have a
moving head. Most receipt printers are thermal dot matrix, but typically
use a single line and print as the paper goes past. The drawback to
thermal paper is that some has been found to have high BPA content.

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If you use NCR (~carbon) paper for invoices, bills, receipts, and the
like, an impact printer is required.

Do they still make 'daisy wheel' printers?

Highly doubtful because they're just too expensive to manufacture
unless there's enough volume to sell.
There's a lot of REAL METAL in those,
as compared to the few metal rods in today's mostly plastic printers.

My understanding is that daisy wheel printers
(and variations: IBM Selectric "golfball" typing element, NEC Spinwriter)
were for TRUE letter quality printing.
300-600 DPI laser printers achieve that,
with true graphics and any font desirable.
Just don't expect it to make carbon/carbonless copies,
but they're fast enough to just print more originals.

They were an intermediate technology whose time and need has passed.

What about line printers that used a long band that ran the length of a
line and was hit as the right character passed by. I think they were
mainly used on mainframes and similar.

Until recently, a friend worked at a warehouse that used a genuine
impact-style line printer (unsure if it was drum, band or rod)
for multipart forms.
Even the Pathmark supermarket near me has a dot matrix printer
in the office with a box of fanfold for some old-skool reporting requirement.

There were even some dot-matrix printers with multiple heads that
printed about 1/3 or 1/2 of the line at a time,
minimizing head movement.

I think "Printronix" was the cream of the crop for high speed
dot matrix printing.
A bar with a dot every .1 (or perhaps .2) inch was in front of the paper,
moving back and forth extremely fast (moved by a motor with an elliptical cog
and counterweight so the case didn't vibrate too badly).
The hammers were behind the paper (also .1 or perhaps .2 inches wide).
The hammer fired as the dot was in the proper place needed.
I don't recall the speed in LPM (lines per minute)
but it was mighty impressive.

I remember seeing my first laser printer in 1981. It was a huge IBM
printer run by a mainframe and cost about US$900K. It printed about 2-3
pages (that 132-character wide green-bar paper) at a time, with a short
pause which I was told was due to a gap in the drum.

I remember the ROLLS of paper nearly 5 feet across,
requiring fork lifts to move them!

I even remember using Teletype 33's with paper tape punch/reader!
Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-Chunka-THWAK.

The NJ Computer Museum and members are still running them
to fully operational PDP8, PDP11 and such!
The NJ computer museum
http://midatlanticretro.org/
locate at Camp Evans NJ
http://www.infoage.org

There were some thermal dot matrix printers. Suspect some mechanisms
are still made, used for labels, etc. specialty.

Thermal printers are still very common, although most don't have a
moving head. Most receipt printers are thermal dot matrix, but typically
use a single line and print as the paper goes past. The drawback to
thermal paper is that some has been found to have high BPA content.

Agreed. Early ones were like a dot matrix printer: 7 (or more)
heating elements on a carriage that went side to side along the line,
paper stepped up a line at a time.
I still have an IBM PC Jr printer like that.
The infamous "TI Silent 700" portable terminal was like that
but with a lousy character set.

Thermal fax machines took that one step further:
the thermal print head went the entire width of the paper.
The only moving part was the roller to move the paper forward.

Most cash register and ATM receipt printers are like that:
thermal paper with a thermal print-head the entire width of the paper.
They're nearly silent and some are surprisingly fast!

Also desktop label printers and P-touch label makers.
Some depend on thermal paper/labels, others use a film ribbon
similar to carbon paper for transferring ink to plain paper or label-film.

Jeff Jonas wrote:
If you use NCR (~carbon) paper for invoices, bills, receipts, and the
like, an impact printer is required.

Do they still make 'daisy wheel' printers?

Highly doubtful because they're just too expensive to manufacture
unless there's enough volume to sell.

Google and you'll discover they are still made and for sale.

There's a lot of REAL METAL in those,
as compared to the few metal rods in today's mostly plastic printers.

? What brand ? Qume, Diablo? Quite familiar with both of those at the
design level and I'm having trouble with your claim here as well.

My understanding is that daisy wheel printers
(and variations: IBM Selectric "golfball" typing element, NEC Spinwriter)
were for TRUE letter quality printing.

Daisy wheels came well after the Selectric mechanisms. The daisy wheel
was plastic with some having metallic layers at the print character
itself for longevity. The Selectric was an extremely complicated
mechanism, with one tolerance that was measured in one half of one
thousadth of an inch. There were multiple models of both the typewriter
version and the I/O printer version. The most reliable I/O version was
constructed with steel rods forming the bracing and rear of the top of
the printer and were pretty much bullet proof if maintained by someone
who knew what they were doing. The later versions had an A shaped
stamping across the top of the printer and construction quality was a
significant step down.

The Diablo and later Qume daisy wheels had only a few moving parts, had
just as good or better print quality even for multiple copies, and could
be switched between pica and elite by changing the print head and the
software settings in the driver. Proportional spacing was also trivial
although not that common in the lower end of the market.

The Selectric keyboard was much harder to displace, as a well adjusted
ballsometer would allow a good typist to go much faster than an
electronic keyboard of the time.

300-600 DPI laser printers achieve that,
with true graphics and any font desirable.

Just don't expect it to make carbon/carbonless copies,
but they're fast enough to just print more originals.

The problem with multiple originals was that they simply werent accepted
by much of the business community in the early 70's as the Daisy's,
Selectrics, etc. dominated the large corporation business office market.

The print quality of the impact printers was lower in my opinion than
lasers, but made up for it with the impact for copies.

The high end printing was done with photo type setters and such, using
photographic images of fonts for example.


They were an intermediate technology whose time and need has passed.

Yeah, still available though. Not sure what for myself, having been
heavily involved with them in the 70s.


What about line printers that used a long band that ran the length of a
line and was hit as the right character passed by. I think they were
mainly used on mainframes and similar.

Until recently, a friend worked at a warehouse that used a genuine
impact-style line printer (unsure if it was drum, band or rod)
for multipart forms.
Even the Pathmark supermarket near me has a dot matrix printer
in the office with a box of fanfold for some old-skool reporting requirement.

There were even some dot-matrix printers with multiple heads that
printed about 1/3 or 1/2 of the line at a time,
minimizing head movement.

I think "Printronix" was the cream of the crop for high speed
dot matrix printing.

Qume and Diablo were about 300 characters per second. Dont recall the
Printronix speed. The carriage on the Qume/Diablo moved with such
energy that lighter weight versions of printer would walk off a table or
desk.

The Qume/Diablo had a head with a matrix of pins that would move back
and forth across the line.



I remember the ROLLS of paper nearly 5 feet across,
requiring fork lifts to move them!

And if that roll ever got loose, only an idiot would get any where near
its path.

Did you know that the solid ink Xerox Phasar printers (not the later laser
Phasar printers) were effectively inkjet printers with a multiple head?

Googling finds that Tektronix sold the Phaser name & print technologies to Xerox.
I remember an early Tektronic Phaser model that used Thermal transfer:
a roll of CMYK wax (kinda like carbon paper)
was selectively melted into the paper in 4 passes (one for each color).
The thermal head was the width of the paper just like a fax machine.