PRINTERS:

INKJET PRINTERS
Inkjet printers are essentially made up of:
 A print head, which consists of nozzles that spray droplets of ink onto the paper to form
characters.
 An ink cartridge or cartridges (Note: some systems use six colours)
 A stepper motor and belt, which moves the print head assembly across the page from side
to side
 A paper feed, which automatically feeds the printer with pages as they are required.
Inkjet printers are often used for printing one-off photos or where only a few pages of good
quality, colour printing is needed; the small ink cartridges or small paper trays would not be
an issue with such applications.

TECHNOLOGY TO PRODUCE INK DROPLETS:

The ink droplets are produced using two different technologies:
Thermal Bubble

1. A thermal bubble works by having hundreds of print nozzles from which the paint is sprayed
2. In each of these nozzles there are tiny resistors that create heat
3. This heat will cause the ink to vaporise which will form tiny bubbles
4. When the bubble expands it pushes the ink out of the nozzle onto the paper
5. Now the resistors will cool causing the bubble to collapse, as it collapses the nozzle will draw
in more ink

PIEZOELECTRIC CRYSTAL

1. Just like a thermal bubble inkjet printer, the piezoelectric version has hundreds of nozzles
2. Each nozzle contains a piezoelectric crystal
3. When printing, an electric current is sent to the crystal which causes it to vibrate in and out
4. When the crystal vibrates inwards it pushes ink out of the nozzle and onto the paper
5. When the crystal vibrates outwards it pulls new ink into the nozzle
 STEPS IN INKJET PRINTING PROCESS
1. Data is sent to printer driver.
2. Printer driver ensures right format for printer.
3. A check is made to ensure if printer is available to print.
4. Data is sent to printer and stored in a temporary memory called printer buffer.
5. The printer will check if there is paper. If the paper is jammed or out of paper, an error
message is sent to the computer.
6. As paper is sent through printer, the print head moves side to side spraying CMYK ink.
7. The paper continues going up the printer and allows each line to be printed. It will continue
until the whole page is complete.
8. If there is more data in printer buffer, it will move on to the next data in print buffer.
9. Once the printer buffer is empty, the printer sends an interrupt to the CPU in the computer;
this is a request for more data to be sent to the printer.
LASER PRINTERS:

Laser printers use dry powder ink rather than liquid ink. They use of the properties of static
electricity to produce the text and images. Laser printers print the whole page in one go. Colour laser
printers use 4 toner cartridges – blue, cyan, magenta and black.

The advantages are that they last much longer and the quality is excellent. It is also very quick at
printing - printing 60 pages per minute - and it is suitable for printing both sides. On the other hand,
it is more expensive.

STEPS IN LASER PRINTING PROCESS

1. Data is sent to printer drive.
2. Printer driver ensures right format for printer.
3. A check is made to ensure if printer is available to print.
4. Data is sent to printer and stored in printer buffer.
5. It will start when the printing drum is given a positive charge. The drum rotates and a laser beam
is scanned across leaving negatively charged areas and removing positively charged areas.to match
text of page.
6. The drum is coated with a powder called toner and is it positively charged so it sticks to the
negatively charged area.
7. A negatively charged paper is rolled over drum.
8. The toner on drum sticks to paper.
9. Electric charge on paper is removed after the drum rotates to .prevent paper from sticking to
drum.
10. The paper goes through a fuser (set of heated rollers) the heat melts the ink and fixes in in the
paper.
11. A discharge lamp removes all electric charge from drum and it is read to print the next page.

3-D PRINTER
3D printers are used to produce solid objects that actually work. They are primarily based on inkjet
and laser printer technology. The solid object is built up layer by layer using materials such as:
powdered resin, powdered metal, paper or ceramic.
HOW TO CREATE A SOLID OBJECT USING 3D PRINTERS:
1. A design is made using CAD software

2. The final design is imported to software that prepares a suitable format for the 3D printer.

3. The 3D object is set up

4. Object is built up by layer. The time taken depends on the thickness, size and material used.

5. Object is removed from printer and then prepared. Some remove the excess plastic powder. Some
require cutting the unused material. Or they could be left to dry.

FEATURES OF 3-D PRINTING:

1. 3D printers range from the size of a microwave oven up to the size of a small car.
2. 3D printers use additive manufacturing (i.e. the object is built up layer by
layer); this is in sharp contrast to the more traditional method of subtractive
manufacturing (i.e. removal of material to make the object).
TYPES OF 3-D PRINTING:

Direct 3D printing uses inkjet technology. The print head moves from side to side and it can move up
and down to build the layers of the object

Binder 3D printing uses two passes for each layer. The first pass uses dry powder which gets sprayed
onto the layer. The second pass uses a binder (type of glue) which is sprayed to form a solid layer.
USES OF 3-D PRINTERS:

 The covering of prosthetic limbs can be made to exactly fit the limb.
 3-D printers are used for making items to allow precision in reconstructive surgery.
 Fashion and art – 3D printing allows new creative ideas to be developed.

DATA STORAGE
Memory is usually referred to as the internal devices used to store data that the computer can
access directly. Storage devices allow users to store applications, data and files.
Memory and storage devices can be split up into two distinct groups:
 Primary memory
 Secondary storage.

PRIMARY MEMORY
It is Main memory inside a computer. Primary memory is directly accessed by CPU and provides
faster access than secondary storage. It can be both volatile and non-volatile. There are two main
types of primary storage:

 RAM
 ROM
RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM)

It is volatile/temporary memory (the contents of the memory are lost when the power to the RAM is
turned off). It is used to store:

• Data,

• Files or part of the operating system that is currently in use.

It can be written to or read from, and the contents of the memory can be changed. In general, the
larger the size of RAM the faster the computer will operate.

TYPES OF RAM: Following are the two types of RAM.

1. DRAM

2. SRAM

DRAM: DYNAMIC RAM (DRAM) chip consists of a number of transistors and capacitors. Each of
these parts is tiny since a single RAM chip will contain millions of transistors and capacitors. The
function of each part is:
• Capacitor – this holds the bits of information (0 or 1)
• Transistor – this act like a switch; it allows the chip control circuitry to read the capacitor or change
the capacitor’s value.
This type of RAM needs to be constantly refreshed (that is, the capacitor needs to be re-charged
every 15 microseconds otherwise it would lose its value). If it wasn’t refreshed, the capacitor’s
charge would leak away very quickly leaving every capacitor with the value 0.
DRAMS HAVE A NUMBER OF ADVANTAGES OVER SRAMS:
 They are much less expensive to manufacture than SRAM
 They consume less power than SRAM
 They have a higher memory capacity than SRAM.
STATIC RAM (SRAM)
A major difference between SRAM and DRAM is that SRAM doesn’t need to be constantly refreshed.
It makes use of flip flops, which hold each bit of memory.
SRAM is much faster than DRAM when it comes to data access (typically, access time for SRAM is 25
nanoseconds and for DRAM are 60 nanoseconds).

READ-ONLY MEMORY (ROM):

Some features of ROM are as follow:
 They are non-volatile (the contents are not lost after powering off the computer).
 They are permanent memories.
 The contents can only be read.
 They are often used to store the (BIOS); these are known as the start-up instructions (or
bootstrap)
MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RAM AND ROM: