What is a Line Printer?

Line Printer is an impact printer that is used to print text-based printing industries and businesses, the reason behind the using line printer is its low-cost printing. This article contains all the fundamentals of what is line printer, the types, and the working of each printer.

What is a Line Printer?

A line printer is a type of impact printer known for its high-speed printing capabilities, a line printer prints one line of text at a time. It’s used for printing documents, and reports and is widely used for printing invoices at shops. It is generally used in the area of large-scale printing requirements.

The normal speed of a line printer is 3000 LPM (Line Per Minute), there are two different types of line printers, including drum printers and chain printers. Each printer works slightly differently from the other but nature is the same as printing one line of text at a time. Line Printers work on continuous forms of paper feeding, unlike individually cut sheets.

Types of Line Printer

Importance of Line Printer

• Line printers are used for high-scale printing requirements in the business industry.
• It is the fastest printer in the segment of impact printer and speed is 3000 lines per minute.
• The line printer is cost-effective in terms of printing cost.

Types of Line Printer

Below are the two types of Line Printer

1. Chain Printer

Chain Printers are Line printers, which print one line at a time. The set of all characters is placed on a chain. In the current market, many different character set printers available such as 48, 64, and 96. To print the characters onto the paper there are also some hammers, which are placed in front of the chain. Paper is placed between the print hammers and the inked ribbon. The total number of hammers available is equal to the total number of printing characters.

As the chain rotates on high speed the character is printed on the paper one by one by activating the appropriate hammer of the character. Chain printers can only able to print the characters that are pre-defined. these types of Printers can able to print 400 to 3000 LPM.

Chain Printer

2. 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

Advantages of Line Printer

Let’s see the some advantages of Line Printers.

• Reliable and Durable in operation: The line 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 very low maintenance cost, and only require lubrication and inked ribbon changes 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: Line 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 Line Printer

Below are some drawbacks of Line Printer.

• Only Monochrome Printing Ability: This is the most disadvantage of line printers that are not capable of printing high-resolution graphics images and color fonts.
• Noisy Operation: Line printers are built with many mechanical components so the moving hammer creates noise in the environment.
• Continuous Paper Feeding: These printers demand continuous feeding of paper into the printer which is not an easy task to provide continuous feeding to printing in real-life situations.

Conclusion

Line printers were very popular in the mid-20th century for their printing technology but with time they become less popular in the market due to new technology coming into the current world that’s fulfill the business requirements. laser printers are very popular for their excellent printing quality and high resolution graphics images.

Frequently Asked Questions On Line Printers – FAQs

Are line printers still in use today?

Line printers have largely been replaced by newer technologies, such as laser printers, and inkjet printers but they are still used in some applications where high speed continuous form printing is necessary.

Are there any alternatives to line 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.

Can line 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.