Archive for the ‘Thermal Paper’ Category
Thermal paper, contrary to the opinion of the person who told me that it’s the kind of paper that you use for insulation, is actually a kind of heat activated paper used in inkless printers. Thermal paper actually has the ink already covering its surface, but locked inside a chemical matrix. When heat is applied, the matrix breaks down and the ink becomes visible, but only in the specific location in which heat was applied.
Thermal paper printers, then, are able to apply heat instead of ink to create a printed image. Thermal printers tend to be smaller and less complex, mechanically speaking, than regular ink printers. They have fewer moving parts and therefore, fewer parts to wear out or break down. This gives them a longer lifespan and greater reliability for high usage applications.
High usage printer applications are things like cash registers, POS credit card machines, gas pumps, and ATMs. All of these devices are spitting out receipts all day long. Inside these machines are compact thermal paper rolls that hold hundreds of feet of paper on each roll. Most of these machines cut off the paper automatically at the minimum length required to fit the printed receipt in order to economize on the amount of paper used.
The reliability of thermal printers is an important consideration in these applications. Many are in places where there is no human attendant to run and fix something if it should break down. At best they can send an alert to a central office which can, in turn, send a repairman out to take a look and fix whatever went wrong. That could take hours on a good day. The length of time it takes to send someone out to get the machine running properly again is time that the machine is shut down and not earning any money.
Aside from reliability, thermal printers are also more economical than most ink-based printers. The initial cost is lower due to the simplicity of the printer design. Consumable supply cost is also lower because there are no ink cartridges to buy. Thermal paper rolls are relative inexpensive, especially when purchased in bulk from a low overhead, online supplier.
Thermal printers are suited to these kinds of commercial application where a monochrome (single color) print out is required. Things like receipts or credit card authorizations are perfect applications for monochrome printing. Applications requiring color prints such as photo printers or personal printers must use colored inks to achieve multi-colored printing.
For the right application, there is not better alternative than thermal printers. Lower initial cost, higher reliability, and lower operating cost combine to make them superior to ink printers for most high volume commercial printing applications.