What is a Drum Printer?

Drum printer is an impact printer that is used for monochrome text-based printing for large printing requirements in industries and businesses. This article contains all the fundamentals of what a is Drum printer and the workings of a Drum printer.

What is a Drum Printer?

Drum Printers work with drums and it contains the number of characters, which is printed on the drum. In this printer, all the characters are not printed at one time but their printing speed is very high. In this, the paper is placed between the drum and the printing hammer, and the character is printed onto the paper by activating the particular hammer.

Drum printer only prints the pre-defined characters it is restricted to printing color pictures and special types of font text and also creates noise in the environment because it uses the printing hammer to print the characters.

Drum printers are available in 64 and 96-character sets in the market.

Drum Printer

In the drum printer paper is placed between the drum and the printing hammer, The drum carries all sets of characters which are printed onto the paper by activating the appropriate hammer and the drum takes ink from the inked ribbon and prints on the paper.

Importance of Drum Printer

Below are the importance of drum printer

• Drum printer works on very high-speed printing technology because it carries all the sets of characters.
• It is capable of printing desirable size of paper but conditioned is we have to pre-defined the size of paper.
• Drum is only the component that is capable of printing all character sets.

Advantages of Drum Printer

Let’s see some advantages of the Drum Printer.

• Reliable and Durable in operation: The drum printers are built with mechanical parts so they can work better in the situation of humidity, dust, and varying temperatures as compared to the modern laser printer that comes with sensitive electronics parts.
• Low Operating Cost: These printers come with a very low maintenance cost, and only require change-inked ribbon in specific intervals.
• Provides Good Quality Printing: This type of printer is purely made for text-based printing so it produces very good printing in terms of monochrome printing.
• Environment Friendly: Drum printer uses a single color inked band that is safe for our environment, unlike toner power which is passed through the many air filtration.

Disadvantages of Drum Printer

Below are some drawbacks of Line Printer.

• Only Monochrome Printing Ability: This is the foremost disadvantage of drum printers that are not capable of printing high-resolution graphics images and color fonts.
• Noisy Operation: Drum printers are built with many mechanical components so the moving hammer creates noise in the environment.
• Replacement Drum: Replacement of Drum is required whenever the quality of the printing level is not satisfying.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a drum printer is very useful when we want maintenance-free printing, it is required for drum change when the quality of printing is degraded, so it is suggested to keep an extra drum for replacement and receive crystal-clear printing.

Frequently Asked Questions on Drum Printer – FAQs

Can Drum printers be connected to modern computers?

Yes, parallel ports, serial ports, or network connections. These ports are used for transferring the data files. However, for compatibility of newer operating systems additional hardware may be required.

Are there any alternatives to drum printers?

Yes, laser printers, inkjet printers, and digital presses are the main three options available in the current market, that’s an offer for faster printing speeds, higher print quality, capable of handling different types of media and documents, and come with wireless printing technology.

What to do when getting poor-quality printing?

In such cases there can be two situations.

1. Firstly low ink: when the ink is low on the printer quality of printing is not up to the level, so please ensure the level of ink is correct.

2. Secondly Replacement of Drum: Another reason for getting poor-quality printing can be the degraded drum, so it requires the replace the existing drum with a new one.