Thermal Printers - CompTIA A+ 220-1201 - 3.8

If you've checked out in a store or you've received a package in the mail, then you've either received a receipt or a label on a package that was printed using a thermal printer. Thermal printers work by using white paper and applying heat to certain parts of the paper. Every part of the page that

receives that heat will turn black and we'll be able to read the output on that page. That means there's no ink. We're not using any toner. Instead, we're using the chemicals built into the page to create that final output. Another interesting characteristic of thermal printers is that they're relatively quiet. Usually, the only thing you hear

is the motor that is used to send the paper through the printer, but the actual printing process is nearly silent. We of course are using heat to create the final output on this page. That's why we call it a thermal printer because of that heat. But that also means that we need to be careful about

what we do with that output. You don't want to put that receipt or that label near another heat source or that part of the page will turn black as well. You'll also want to be careful about using clear tape on your receipt or your thermal output. That's because some clear tape will create a chemical

reaction and turn that part of the page that it touches to white. Because there's no ink, there's no toner, and there's a very specialized type of paper that we would use. These thermal printers are relatively straightforward in their construction. The thermal paper is pulled through the printer using this feed assembly and very often it is simply using friction

to be able to hold that paper in place. This is a simple receipt printer. There is a roll of thermal paper that's placed into the printer. And you can see the cover is up on the printer right now. At the very top, you can see that feed roller, and it looks like it uses a gear