What is a Non-impact Printer?

All the impact printers print slow due to the slow mechanical movement of the print head. Efforts were made to eliminate the mechanical motion of the print head to increase the speed of the printers and as a result non-impact high speed laser printers and inkjet printers were developed.

Laser printers are page printers, meaning that they print an entire page at a time. In fact they resemble photocopies in size and appearance and employ a similar technology. They are very fast, typical speed being around 8 pages per minute and virtually silent in operation. The print quality is good, almost equal to that of daisy wheel printers. The resolution of current models is 600 dots per inch (dpi), though some of the latest versions offer 1400 dpi. Laser printers can handle graphics as well as text.

They offer the quality of the daisy wheel with the versatility of the dot matrix while being faster and quieter than both. The print quality is higher than that of inkjet printers but they are more expensive.

The print mechanism in a laser printer consists of a laser light, roller and toner (ink) and works as follows: a sheet of paper is fed from a tray into the machine and receives an electrostatic charge across its surface. The laser beam then rapidly and invisibly traces the computer’s output (text or graphics) as a pattern of tiny dots on the paper; during this process it removes the electrostatic charge from the points where the beam strikes the paper. The paper then receives a fine toner across its surface which adheres to the points with no charge but which is washed off the rest. After passing between rollers, the paper emerges, heated and dried at the front of the machine.