Choose a Printer Wrap Up

Speed and Throughput

Laser printers, thermal transfer printers and impact printers all offer impressive speed capabilities. Each of these 3 technologies measures speed differently. Line impact printers are rated in lines per minute. Serial dot matrix printers are rated in characters per second. Laser printers measure speed in pages per minute. Thermal printers use ratings of inches per second.

Printers and the numbers

Now its time for some numbers. Typical line impact printers will print from 400 to 1400 lines per minute. Midrange laser printers will offer from 16 to 40 pages per minute. And thermal transfer printers will run in a range of 4 to 10 inches per second. While you're thinking about speed, remember that wide carriage printers permit more side-by-side image printing, greatly improving throughput. Finally, consider the volume you want to print each month.

Printers and the duty cycle

You'll also want to look at the printer's duty cycle. Exceeding a printer's duty cycle can result in increased maintenance costs and may even void your warranty. Lasers have a definite duty cycle. Thermal printers also have a specified duty cycle, but mainly need to have their print heads replaced frequently. In contrast, some impact printers have no duty cycle limitation at all.

Total cost of a printer

The purchase cost to buy a printer is only part of the picture. The cost of operation - that is - the cost of daily printing jobs on the printer needs to be added to the purchase price to get a true picture of what a printer really costs. Often, the cost of operation is the dominant factor in the total cost of ownership and strongly overshadows the cost of purchase.

To formulate a proper cost analysis, the cost of operation should include the cost of consumables, service, and the media used. A faster printer with a purchase price of $10,000 is often more cost effective than a printer which costs just $3,000 to purchase. The cost of the service and supplies over the life of the printer, particularly for lasers and thermals, accounts for up to 90% of all costs incurred. So, the cost of purchase becomes trivial in comparison to the cost of service and supplies.

High volume printers

Economies of scale dictate that the higher the capacity of the printer, the lower the service and supplies cost per page printed. So if your print volumes are high enough, a more "expensive" printer can be much more cost effective. You can expect that on a cost per page or cost per label basis, impact printers will be the least expensive with laser printers slightly higher and thermal transfer printers even higher. Consumables costs are the prime reason for the differences in cost per page. Impact printers use relatively low cost multi-pass ribbons. Laser printers use more expensive toners. Finally, thermal transfer printers use relatively expensive one-pass ribbons where much of the ink is unused and discarded.

Print Quality

If the printer you are considering meets your other requirements, the remaining question is whether its dot-making satisfies your requirements. By the way, if you need to print very small characters, a laser printer or thermal printer will probably be required. But, in general, you'll be trading off the quality of the image against the cost per image.

Printers and software compatibility

Finally, it's not unusual for companies to have requirements for several different printing technologies. Some environments have all three: a laser printer for business correspondence, a thermal printer in the warehouse to print labels, and an impact printer for batch reports. All of these printers may have different requirements for printer emulation languages. This is particularly important if you are printing bar codes and graphics. Make sure the printer you choose is compatible with you current application and system software.