Output Devices : Impact Printers

Output Devices : Impact Printers

Impact printers produce output by striking a ribbon with a hammer. When the ribbon is hit a mark is made on the paper behind it.

Impact printers are the oldest type of printer technology. Because of the hammering action impact printers are noisy when they are printing.

Impact printers have three advantages over non-impact printers :

Cost : Impact printers are cheap to buy and very cheap to run.

Duplication : If carbon paper is put into the printer then an impact printer can print more than one copy of a document at a time. This feature is often used by companies when they print invoices, bills etc. The company can keep one copy themselves and send the other copy to the customer.

There are three different types of impact printer. They are :

Impact Printers
Dot Matrix
Daisy Wheel
Line

GCSE ICT Companion 04 - (C) P Meakin 2004