3d printers

[Jane Maria]

Buying a printer can be quite a complicated business, there are more shapes, sizes and types of 3d printers offered to the home and business user than ever before. Printers have also become specialised because of their intended purpose.

It is no longer a case of "a printer is really a printer" ;.Printers are now made to be good in a certain area rather than a "Jack-of-all trades", that'll do everything.

A generally overlooked issue, is ab muscles serious consideration of cost of ownership, which is focused on of how much it will cost to help keep your printer running (see below). So making that decision on which printer to choose can be quite a seriously arduous task, particularly if you are keen to get a printer that is not just affordable to get but in addition cost effective to run.

So this can be a information that you'll require to learn and consider, but no one informs you! We have not expanded on which printer is the greatest at any given time because models constantly change and you can find that information in virtually any current glossy PC magazine off the shelf. Instead, here you will find the good, bad and ugly bits from the several types of printers available so you possibly can make the best decision yourself.

Inkjet Technology

Inkjet printers form images by spraying tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper. The size and precision of the dots of ink and the sort and quality of the ink itself govern how good the print quality is. A good inkjet printer can produce very near photo-quality images using specialist photo coated paper. Generally you will find two types of inkjet printers, those with the printhead built into the printer like Epson, Brother etc and those where in actuality the printhead is actually on the ink cartridge like HP and Lexmark. There are lots of arguments for and against both technologies, in our experience we have discovered both to be very good, the major difference appears to be that the price of running a printer utilising the "printhead" type ink cartridge is usually higher.

Inkjet ink is specially formulated for specific printer models and their purpose, much technology is mixed up in development of those inks to improve print quality, longevity, drying speeds and printing speeds etc. Most inkjet ink is produced using dye based ink that may flow easily through the tiny nozzles of the printhead, this sort of ink is good for photos and colour shades but not too beneficial to longevity or solid vibrant colour, think of it such as a water colour painting. Lately pigment ink technology has advanced considerably allow use in inkjet printing. Previously ink pigments were too big and would block up the nozzles. This kind of ink is good for solid colours and longevity, think of it like a fat painting.

Manufacturers like Epson, HP and Jet Tec are now increasingly using a fusion of dye based and pigmented inks to generate superb quality photo printing with vibrant colours and longevity too.

Inkjet printers use anything between two and eight ink cartridges to do their job. Generally the entry-level machines use two cartridges, good all round machines use four and specialist photo printers use six or more. The two cartridge system works fine though can be quite a bit wasteful on the color ink, so get a four-cartridge system where possible particularly if you do colour printing. The six or maybe more cartridge systems produce outstanding photos, but could be costly and a pain to help keep changing cartridges (printer does not work if any one cartridge is empty).

Inkjet printers are the most effective solution for most people and are often probably the most economical solution to print - until you are printing large volumes.

Portable Inkjet Printers
These printers are small, lightweight and suitable for people on the move. Even though printing of high quality photographs is usually beyond this sort of printer, basic colour printing is of good quality and the quality of text print is mainly outstanding considering how big these tiny portable A4 printers. These printers are not ideal for high volume printing.

Inkjet Printers

The Inkjet Printer is probably the most commonly used form of printer among home and business users. With excellent all round printing capabilities, from black & white text print and good colour prints right through to very hi-resolution, high quality photographs using Inkjet Photo Printers. Inkjet printers can be found from cheap entry level to high-end business use machines and can print from photo size prints to massive A2 and bigger sizes, you will find models for occasional use and others for high volume print jobs too. One of the numerous great things about Inkjet printers is that you can use a wide variety of media to print on, including standard paper, photo paper, card, t-shirt transfers, canvas, projector film etc, achieving different looks and textures for your prints and print for different purposes. Most Inkjet printers are USB connections and not ideal for networks, although models may also be readily available for networks and with parallel connections.

Multi-Function Inkjet Printers

Multi-Function Inkjet Printers have now been built to generally meet the requirements of home offices and small businesses. These excellent value machines provide multiple solutions in one compact and easy to use machine i.e. printing, scanning, copying and some also provide built-in fax machines too. Not only are these machines great for saving space on your desk, but they are also very good for printing too utilising the same technology as standard inkjet printers. The only thing you need to be aware of is as possible only use one function at a time and if anything goes wrong by having an "All-in-one" machine, you might lose the most of the functions at the same time!

Laser Printers

Laser printers work in an identical solution to photocopiers, except they work with a laser in place of a bright light to scan with. They work by creating an electrostatic image of the page onto a charged photoreceptor, which often attracts toner in the shape of an electrostatic charge. Toner may be the material used to make the image (as ink is in an inkjet printer) and is really a very fine powder, so laser printers use toner cartridges in place of ink cartridges.

Laser Printers have traditionally been the most effective printing solution for heavy office users while they create a quite high quality black text finish and offer relatively low running costs. However, laser printers have advanced a whole lot recently and their prices have steadily dropped, as a result nowadays there are compact laser printers, multi-function and colour laser printers all at very affordable prices. Laser printers make sense if you need to do a lot of high quality black or colour prints, not photos. The best thing about a colour laser printer is that they can print a good quality colour image on standard copier paper, so you don't need to use expensive photo paper for big jobs. Do check the prices of the consumables before you decide the printer as these can be extremely expensive for colour laser printers.

Laser printers are the most effective solution for people who are printing in large volumes, that is, in 100's of pages at a time or 1000's of pages per month. Colour lasers also take a significant while to loosen up, so are not suitable for printing single pages.

Solid Ink Printers

Solid ink printers use solid wax ink sticks in a "phase-change" process, they work by liquefying wax ink sticks into reservoirs and then squirting the ink onto a shift drum from where it is cold-fused onto the paper in a single pass. Solid ink printers are marketed almost exclusively by Tektronix / Xerox and are aimed at larger businesses and high volume colour printing.

Solid ink printers was once cheaper to buy than similarly specified colour lasers and fairly economical to operate owing to a low component usage, today it is definitely not any cheaper than the usual colour laser printer. Output quality is good but generally not as effective as the most effective colour lasers for text and graphics or the most effective inkjets for photographs. Print speeds are not as fast as most colour lasers.

Dye-Sublimation Printers

Dye-Sublimation printers use heat and solid colour dyes to make lab-quality photographic images. Dye-Sub printers contain a roll of transparent film composed of page-sized panels of colour, with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dye embedded in the film. Print head heating elements vaporize the inks, which adhere to a specially coated paper, while the ink cools it re-solidifies on the paper. Colour intensity is controlled by precise variations in temperature.

Dye-sublimation printers set down color in continuous tones one color at a time in place of dots of ink like an inkjet, because the color is absorbed into the paper rather than sitting on top, the output is more photo-realistic, stronger and less vulnerable to fading than other ink technologies.

The downside of Dye-Sub printers is that they're generally more costly to get and run, usually limited by photo sized prints only and can only just print onto one form of specialised paper in addition to being quite slow to print.

Dye-Sublimation printers are best for individuals who wish to link up their digicam to a purpose built printer and print out the finest quality photos at home without fuss.

Dot Matrix Printers

Dot matrix printers are relatively old fashioned technology today with poor quality print, slow and very noisy output. This kind of printer is no longer used until you wish to generate invoices utilising the continuous paper with holes on both sides. The good thing is that they're very cheap to operate!

Cost of Ownership

Many printers today are very cheap to get, but people are occasionally shocked to find the price of replacing the consumables (ink or laser cartridges, imaging drums, fuser, oils, specialist papers etc). The expense of replacing the ink can sometimes cost more compared to printer itself! This really is one of the most commonly overlooked factors when printers are reviewed and yet certainly one of the main what to consider before handing over your hard earned cash. Tests run in 2003 by Which? magazine famously compared the price of HP's ink with vintage 1985 Dom Perignon.

A Sheffield City Council report aimed at helping schools choose the best-value printers to get, calculated total cost of ownership within the time of a printer (not sure the length of time that is!). Adding up most of the running costs, ink or toner, paper, maintenance and even electricity, SCC worked out a colour inkjet costs approx 38p per page to operate in comparison to a colour laser which costs approx 7p per page. Sheffield City Council advised its schools that when they 3d printers a lot more than three colour pages per day (assuming a 40-week academic year) they need to buy a laser.