Archive for the ‘Thermal Paper’ Category
Deconstructing the Computer Printer
Sometimes the best inventions come from looking at a problem in a completely different way. For example, let’s go through the process of designing a new computerized printer and let’s say we need something that is going to handle high volume application in a commercial setting, perhaps printing receipts in an ATM.
Let’s first examine some of the problems with regular computer printers. The ink is too expensive and runs out often. Paper jams with some regularity, ruining print jobs and wasting time. The printer is too big and bulky. Computer printers break down too often. Computer printers are too expensive.
Let’s imagine we have free rein to do anything with the new design of the printer. The first problem, for example, can be easily solved by eliminating ink altogether. If the printer doesn’t need ink, then the ink won’t be too expensive and it won’t need to be replaced. We’ll worry about how to solve the problem later.
The paper jams taking the printer out of service until it can be fixed. In examining a jammed printer we see that this often happens as a new sheet of paper is fed into the printer slightly out of alignment. The corners catch on the machine and it gets stuck. What if we didn’t use individual sheets. Instead we could use one long continue roll of paper so that there is no corner or edge to get hung up as it is fed into the machine sheet by sheet.
The printer is too big and bulky. First, since we’re only printing ATM receipts, the printer doesn’t need to handle 8.5” X 11” sheets. It only needs to be wide enough to handle a 2 or 3 inch wide receipt. Ok let’s go a step farther and take out some parts. We’ve already decided we don’t need ink, so ink cartridges and the mechanism to hold them can be removed first. The electronics that switch between the different colors of ink can go. In short, let’s just examine the entire mechanism and reduce the number of parts everywhere we can. That should not only solve the problem of size, but should also help with cost. Fewer parts means less manufacturing. It also means fewer things to wear out and go wrong.
As it turns out, all of these solutions are already being used in today’s ATM printers. Thermal printers are constructed of a simple design using fewer parts, and fewer moving parts than conventional ink printers. They don’t use ink. Instead they use thermal paper that already has the ink locked away in the paper. When heat is applied by the thermal printer, the ink becomes visible in exactly the right places to print the receipt. Furthermore, this paper comes on thermal paper rolls instead of on individual sheets.
It looks like by examining all the problems of conventional printers we have arrived at the solution of the thermal printer.