Years after it was revealed that HP’s printer ink was more expensive than actual human blood, printing photos at home on an inkjet is still a ripoff. You’re better off having them printed professionally at a photo center, or, by recycling a bunch of old electronics into a home-made printer that uses a tapping pencil in lieu of ink carts.
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Archive for the ‘matrix’ Category

Frame from the music video
The Canadian indie rock band Young Rival is famous for creative non-standard music videos to their songs. For example, the video on the song “Two reasons” shows different people vividly mimicking with fancifully painted bodies and faces. Their new song “Elevator” (though released in 2015) has got its music video only now due to special production conditions—the video was done on a dot matrix printer.
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This month, PRINTEK, a famous provider of mobile thermal and business transaction document print solutions, has represented 4 new printers in the line-up of serial impact dot matrix printers. The FormsPro 5000, FormsPro 5002, PrintMaster 700 and PrintMaster 702 are geared towards the industrial and commercial market space and provide the highest quality multi-part forms printing and superior paper handling.
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In spite of the fact that laser printers have become affordable over the years, they won’t force out matrix printers from the market. Jet printers – another popular family of printers – won’t make it either. The reason lies in the printing technology: while laser and jet printers are so-called nonimpact printers (they don’t interfere with paper), the pins of matrix printers strike ink directly in the paper. To leave prints of letters on the paper is the function of impact printers, and it is necessary or desirable in many areas (for example, while preparing the documents or missives). One more reason of success of matrix printers hides undoubtedly in lower cost of consumables. Flexibility of matrix printers is also important. Quite often one device combines availability to print on the rolled paper and single sheets, in black-and-white or color mode – and only few preparatory operations are needed. Moreover, the matrix printing technology has stood the test of time, and such printouts could be of rather high quality. That’s why this market is still full of offers. Meet the short reviews of the popular dot matrix printers of the famous brands. (more…)
Epson Company has introduced the Epson LQ-2190 — an improved model of the well-known printer Epson LQ-2180. Compared to its predecessor, the new printer has a higher speed and larger print resource, and is equipped with USB interface.
Epson LQ-2190 is designed to work in the banking sector, as well as in other industries where you want to print on multicopy media. Due to the high reliability of the printing mechanism, the printer can be used under adverse working conditions — in dusty areas, in production shops, as a part of mobile workstations.
Maximum speed of the new printer is 576 characters per second (12 cpi) in HSDraft mode. The ribbon allows you to print up to 8 million characters. The estimated resource of the Epson LQ-2190 printhead is 400 million points per needle. High speed and performance make it the most efficient at work. Installation and use of the Epson LQ-2190 are simple and convenient, thanks to a flexible supply of paper, parallel and USB interfaces.
Basic specifications of Epson LQ-2190:
- 24-needle matrix printer, 136 columns (10 cpi)
- Maximum print speed — 576 cps at 12 cpi HSDraft mode
- Printing acceleration mode PSE for print graphic fonts
- Prints up to 6 copies simultaneously (1 original + 5 copies)
- High reliability — MTBF of 20,000 hours
- Flexible compatibility — USB 2.0 and LPT interfaces. Optional COM and Ethernet ports
- Low power consumption, certified by ENERGY STAR standard