Thermal printers
There are tons of different printers out there. Most people think about inkjet, laser or solid ink printers because that’s what they see in their offices and homes. However there is another kind of printer that is generally forgotten that doesn’t use toner or ink to operate. To learn about the history of thermal printers, check out Wikipedia.
Thermal printers are completely different from inkjet, laser or solid ink printers. Thermal printers heat coated thermochromic paper, also called thermal paper. This happens when the paper being printed on passes over the print head.
How does this turn into a printed document? Well the coating inside the paper turns black whenever the paper is heated. This creates the printed image.
Can thermal printers print in color or black-and-white only? Actually they can do a little bit of both. Standard thermal printers only give buyers a black-and-white option; however there are a few that print in only color. Generally the text will print in red only.
Inside a thermal printer there are four different mechanisms. The first is the thermal print head. This is the piece that generates the heat and produces the text on the paper. The platen is the second piece. Much like an inkjet roller, this just feeds the paper into the machine. A spring that applies pressure to the print head is the third piece of equipment. The last thing needed is the controller board that controls the operations of the machine.
So where do you find thermal printers? In the 1990s, thermal printers were everywhere you went. Nowadays they are much harder to find because of the advances in technology that have occurred. The most common place to see a thermal printer this day and age is on an ultrasound scanned image at a hospital. However, if you want to take your picture home, they might make a duplicate inkjet image and laminate it.