Sipna College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati.

Department of Computer science and Engineering

Branch: - Computer Science & Engg. Class:- III Year
Subject: - CLab-II Semester:- VIth

Teacher Manual

PRACTICAL NO: 5

AIM: To study about printer and it’s troubleshooting.

THEORY:

 A printer is an electromechanical device which converts the text and graphical documents from
electronic form to the physical form. Generally they are the external peripheral devices which are
connected with the computers or laptops through a cable or wirelessly to receive input data and print
them on the papers.

 A printer is a device that accepts text and graphic output from a computer and transfers the
information to paper, usually to standard size sheets of paper.

 Printers are Output devices used with the computer. A monitor provides the “soft copy” of our result;
whereas the printer is used to get a “hard copy” of a result.

CHARACTERISTICS OF PRINTERS:-

1. SPEED :

It specified a character Per Second, Line Per Minute or Pages per Minute. It indicates how fast a
printer works.

2. QUALITY

This shows shape of printed character. Printer quality specified in terms of DRAFT, NLQ (Near
Letter Quality) or LQP (Letter Quality Printer).

3. CHARACTER SET:

Indicating total number of data characters and control character recognized by printer.

4. INTERFACE:

It specifies whether the printer receives character from printer in parallel form or in serial form.

5. BUFFER SIZE:

Indicating how many data characters can be stored in the printer buffer memory before printing.
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 Sipna College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati.
Department of Computer science and Engineering
6. PRINT SIZE:

It specified as character size and number of character per line.

7. PRINT DIRECTION:

It specified as unidirectional, reverse, bidirectional logic seeking.

TYPES OF PRINTERS:-

IMPACT PRINTER:-

Early impact printers worked something like an automatic typewriter, with a key striking an inked
impression on paper for each printed character. In this hammers or pins strike against a ribbon and paper to
print the text. This mechanism is known as electro-mechanical mechanism. The dot-matrix printer was a
popular low-cost personal computer printer. It's an impact printer that strikes the paper a line at a time.

Types of impact printers are: dot matrix, daisy wheel, line, and drum.

Dot matrix:

It is a popular computer printer that prints text and graphics on the paper by using tiny dots to form the
desired shapes. It uses an array of metal pins known as print head to strike an inked printer ribbon and
produce dots on the paper. These combinations of dots form the desired shape on the paper. Generally they
print with a speed of 50 to 500 characters per second as per the quality of the printing is desired. The quality
of print is determined by the number of pins used (varying from 9 to 24).The print head is driven by several
hammers which force each pin to make contact with the paper at the certain time.

Daisy Wheel Printers

Daisy wheel printers print only characters and symbols and cannot print graphics. They are generally slow
with a printing speed of about 10 to 75 characters per second. A circular printing element (known as daisy
wheel) is the heart of these printers that contains all text, numeric characters and symbols mould on each

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 Sipna College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati.
Department of Computer science and Engineering
petal on the circumference of the circle. The printing element rotates rapidly with the help of a servo motor
and pauses to allow the printing hammer to strike the character against the paper.

Line Printer:

A high-speed printer capable of printing an entire line at one time. A fast line printer can print as many as
3,000 lines per minute. So that they are very fast. The disadvantages of line printers are that they cannot
print graphics, the print quality is low, and they are very noisy. Large Computer system typically use Line
Printer.

Drum Printers: -

Drum Printer consists of a Drum Which Consists of a Number of Characters; those are Printed on the Drum.
And the Number of Characters or Number of Tracks are Divided, after examining the width of the Paper.
But there are also Some Character sets Available Means the Number of Characters those are printed on the
Paper. For Example 64, and 96 Characters etc.

In this Paper is placed between the Ribbon and the Head or Hammer there are many hammers on the Front
of Drum. In this Drum Rotates at a Very High Speed and character is printed by activating the Appropriate
Hammer.

NON-IMPACT PRINTERS:

Non-impact printers do not use a striking device to produce characters on the paper; and because these
printers do not hammer against the paper they are much quieter. These printers provide better quality of O/P
at higher speed.

Inkjet printers

Inkjet printers are most popular printers for home and small scale offices as they have a reasonable cost. A
typical inkjet printer can print with a resolution of more than 300 dpi and some good quality inkjet printers
are able to produce full colored hard copies at 600 dpi.

An inkjet printer is made of the following parts:

 Print head – It is the heart of the printer which holds a series a nozzles which sprays the ink drops
over the paper.

 Ink cartridge – It is the part that contains the ink for printing. Generally monochrome (black &
white) printers contain a black colored ink cartridges and a color printer contains two cartridges –
one with black ink and other with primary colors (cyan, magenta and yellow).

 Belt – A belt is used to attach the print head with the stepper motor.

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 Sipna College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati.
Department of Computer science and Engineering
 Paper Tray – It is the place where papers are placed to be printed.

Laser Printers:-

Laser printers are the most popular printers that are mainly used for large scale qualitative printing. A laser
printer uses a slight different approach for printing. It does not use ink like inkjet printers, instead it uses a
very fine powder known as ‘Toner’.

Working of laser printers, components of laser printers:

 The control circuitry is the part of the printer that talks with the computer and receives the printing
data.

 A Raster Image Processor (RIP) converts the text and images in to a virtual matrix of dots.

 The photo conducting drum which is the key component of the laser printer has a special coating
which receives the positive and negative charge from a charging roller. A rapidly switching laser
beam scans the charged drum line by line. When the beam flashes on, it reverses the charge of tiny
spots on the drum, respecting to the dots that are to be printed black. As soon the laser scans a line, a
stepper motor moves the drum in order to scan the next line by the laser.

Installation Of Printer:-

 Hardware Installation

1) Turn off computer system.

2) Connect parallel cable one end to computer system LPT1 port and other end to printer.

3) Connect power to printer and power “ON” to the printer.

4) Then power ON the computer.

 Software Installation

1) Click on start then popup menu display.

2) Go to setting, it display another menu, from that select printer.

3) Then pop up window open, it contains icon “Add Printer”.

4) Double click on “Add Printer”.

5) Add printer wizard starts, click on “NEXT”.

6) Then it shows printer manufacturer name and printers.

7) Select appropriate printer manufacturer, and then select correct printer model and press “NEXT”.

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 Sipna College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati.
Department of Computer science and Engineering
OR

If you have CD/DVD, then press on “CD/DVD Drive” and insert CD/DVD disk into proper drive, then
press “OK”.

Then select printer from list and press “NEXT”.

8) Select port and press “NEXT”.

9) Give installed printer name and select default printer Yes or No then press “Next”.

10) Ask for test page. Select Yes/No and then press “FINISH”. Then installation process will be start
and load driver to your system. Then required printer installed on your computer.

Troubleshooting:-

Printers are notorious for going on the fritz .When you have got vitally important documents so there
are some troubleshooting tips to the ultimate show of frustration.

1. Isolate the problem:

a. Check weather the printer is online or turn the printer OFF and then ON again.

b. If it is a network printer check the network configuration.

c. Use the printer self test to see whether the test page prints correctly.

d. Check whether the software is configured for the printer and correct drivers are loaded for it.

2. Check cable length:

Overly long cables are sometimes responsible for getting mysterious errors. Serial cables aren’t
supposed to be longer than 50 feet’s and older parallel once not more than 6 feet. So the moral seems to be
to keep the parallel port cables as short as possible. Also it is recommended to use A or B switch.

3. Set emulation option correctly:

A more and more common problem is emulation mode. Many people get tripped ontrying to
emulate another printer of some kind another emulation option is international capability also check the
printer’s documentation to see how you handle it.

4. Check ports, their settings, and connections. Printers can have a serial or parallel interface. Parallel
interface uses different voltages and hand shakers from the serial interface, parallel printers are cleaner and
have faster interface therefore given the choice, use parallel. The serial port is a versatile interface which
allows you to set several communication setting for it.

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 Sipna College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati.
Department of Computer science and Engineering
The new ECP parallel ports if used runs in to problems like garble text or graphics. So if it doesn’t work,
change the port to bi-directional.

5. Printers are sensitive to weather changes so always be suspicious when the season changed.

RESULT: Thus, we study about printers and its troubleshooting.

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