Impact Printers - CompTIA A+ 220-1201 - 3.8

One of the most common types of impact printers is called a dot matrix printer. This is because it creates an output on the page by using a small matrix of pins, pressing those pins against a ribbon, and eventually making a mark on the paper. And if you look very carefully at the characters that are

printed on the page, you'll see that they are made up of very small dots. Those little tiny dots are the pins inside of the dot matrix print head. Since these pins are pushing on the paper itself, it's perfect to use for carbon copies or multiple copies where pushing on one page will create more

copies of that page behind it. This is also a relatively low cost per page. So, if you're printing a lot of output, you may be able to save money by using a dot matrix printer. But unfortunately, these are relatively noisy printers. So, if you're working in a library or somewhere where it's very quiet, this might not be

the right printer to use. And as you can see from the characters that are printed on this page, this is a very poor printer to use if you're trying to create any highresolution output. This is why we rarely find dot matrix printers in our homes and our businesses these days and instead it is used in

very niche cases where the best possible printer for that particular use would be something like a dot matrix printer. This printer head moves back and forth across the page. There are small pins inside the print head. The small pins are inside the very front of that print head. it is pushing those pins into the ribbon where the ink is

and that ink is being transferred to the paper that's behind it. If we were to look at the print head, it's relatively small and you can see there's a pretty large heat sink on the back of it because these print heads do get relatively warm. But it is a single print matrix. So to be able to print on