Nowadays, the competition in all walks of life is becoming more and more fierce, especially in the POS bill industry. Competition has penetrated into all aspects of POS marketing, from the production capacity competition in the previous years, to the channel competition, and price competition, until the promotion competition. When the competition reaches the white-hot level, the terminal becomes the last marketing magic weapon, which is the so-called decisive terminal. Terminal management determines the life and death of an enterprise. Although everyone understands the truth, what makes the operators of receipt printers distressed is that in actual operation, the management of terminals is becoming more and more difficult. This is reflected in the terminal operation.
POS receipt printers are widely used in various industries, such as taxation, supermarkets, convenience stores, postal services, banks, entertainment, enterprises and institutions, restaurants and hotels, etc. There are many medium and micro printers on the market now, each of which has its own scope of application. There are many kinds of POS receipt paper printers, and now the concept of micro printers is relatively vague, and the classification is not clear. We don’t talk about the micro-printer module here; we only talk about the micro-printer as a finished product. Let’s make some rough classifications here.
From the classification of use: special micro-printer, general-purpose micro-printer. The so-called dedicated micro-printer refers to a micro-printer used for special purposes, such as professional barcode micro-printing, professional card micro-printing, etc. These micro-printing usually require professional software or driver support, or can only be matched with one or a few. Only a special kind of equipment can work. The general-purpose micro-printer is widely used and can support the print output of many kinds of equipment. Many so-called printers are actually general-purpose micro-printers.
Classification from printing methods: needle type micro-printers, thermal micro-printers, thermal transfer micro-printers, etc. The printing method used by needle micro-printing is that the printing needle hits the ribbon to print the ink of the ribbon on the printing paper. The thermal method is to heat the thermal medium coated on the printing paper. The toner on the ribbon is heated to print the toner on the printing paper. At present, in addition to barcode printers and ticket printers, it is rarely used in other fields in China. In addition, there are also miniature font printers, which are mostly used in taxis. .
From the data transmission method classification: wireless micro-printer and wired micro-printer. Wireless micro-playing uses infrared or bluetooth technology for data communication, and wired micro-playing uses serial or parallel data communication. Of course, usually wireless micro-playing has serial or parallel ports, and data communication can be carried out by wire.
Because the scope of use of special printers is relatively narrow, it is not difficult to choose and buy, so the following introduces the characteristics of various general-purpose micro-printers as a reference for your purchase.
1.) Needle-type micro-printer: The needle-type micro-printer is a relatively common micro-printer, and it has been produced by Epson print heads (printing cores) for a long time in China. One advantage of needle punching is that the printed documents can be stored for a long time. Of course, the ink on the ribbon you choose must be of good quality, so the micro punching used in many convenience stores is needle punching, and because the needle type print head controls Simple, it can be produced with a cheaper control board solution, so it is cheaper. However, needle punching also has many disadvantages: high noise, slow printing speed, fast print head wear, and frequent replacement of the ribbon. Because of its principle, these are insurmountable.
2.) Thermal micro-printer: The needle-type micro-printer is also a relatively common micro-printer, but it came out later than the needle-type micro-printer. Thermal printers have fast printing speed, low noise, little mechanical wear on the print head, and do not require ribbons, eliminating the trouble of replacing ribbons. But it also has shortcomings. Because it uses thermal paper, it cannot be stored indefinitely. It can be stored for one to five years under the condition of avoiding light, and there is also long-term thermal paper that can be stored for ten years.
3.) Wireless mini-printers: Most of the wireless mini-printers now use IrDA technology, but because the IrDA protocol is very complex, the IrDA protocol is generally not integrated in the printer, but the infrared port can be used at the physical layer to simulate the serial port For data transmission, it also provides convenience for other devices with infrared, because many devices with infrared also do not integrate the IrDA protocol, so these devices can communicate with the infrared micro-printer through the infrared port. The biggest advantage of wireless micro printer is that it can realize wireless printing, which is convenient, especially if you need to realize the printing function outdoors, its convenience is more prominent, but infrared printing also has its shortcomings, that is, the accuracy of its data transmission, because there is no integrated IrDA protocol, if the anti-interference ability of the infrared interface is poor, the accuracy of data transmission cannot be guaranteed. And now some domestic companies such as Weiye Technology have broken through the difficulties of IrDA, and the micro printers they produce use IrCOMM (IrCOMM is a protocol of virtual serial port in the application software layer in the IrDA protocol), and IrCOMM is a lot of portable printers. Infrared devices (such as POCKET PC) support the protocol, with IrCOMM, users do not have to worry about the accuracy of data transmission and so on.
4.) Wired micro-printer: Compared with wireless micro-printer, the reliability of data transmission is higher, but if it is used in mobile printing, it will become very inconvenient.
The advantages and disadvantages of several different printers have been introduced above, but you may still have many questions when purchasing. Let’s talk about other matters that need to be paid attention to when purchasing printers.
1.) Printing character set: The character set required by users may not be exactly the same. Some only need numbers, some need English, and some need Chinese characters. When purchasing, pay attention to the required character set.
2.) Dimensions and weight: If it is a printer placed in a fixed place, as long as there is enough space, the size and weight of the printer do not need to be considered too much, but if it is required to be portable, the overall dimensions and weight must be considered.
3.) Power supply: There are two power supply modes for micro printers. One is to use an external regulated power supply, and the other is to use a rechargeable battery. If a regulated power supply is used, the quality of the power supply should be high. The life of the rechargeable battery, the time it can be used on a single charge, and whether the rechargeable battery can be easily disassembled, especially for outdoor users, if the use time of a single charge is too short, the battery life will be very short. If the battery is not easy to remove, the printer will not be able to be used outdoors if the battery runs out of power.
4.) The size of the paper roll: If the user uses it frequently, then the size of the paper roll should be considered. Frequent replacement of the paper roll is an annoying thing.
5.) Printing width and the amount of data to be printed: The printing width is best measured by the number of characters printed in each line. For example, with the same 57mm paper width, more can print 24 characters, and less can only print 10 characters. Which one to choose should be determined according to the needs of the user.
6.) Consumables: The consumables used for thermal printers and needle punching are different, so for a roll of paper of the same diameter, thermal printing paper is long but expensive, and needle punching paper is short but cheap. If the same amount of data is printed according to the point of view, the consumption of the two is similar on the printing paper, but the needle also consumes the ribbon, so in general, the consumables consumed by the thermal printer are cheaper.
7.) Convenience of use: This may be a problem that many buyers ignore. The convenience of use is mainly reflected in various LED light indications, sound prompts, key function design, and paper change (thermal printers may have Advantage, many thermal printers now use the clamshell paper loading method, which can change the paper very simply and quickly, while the needle printing cannot do this due to the limitation of the principle of the printer core), all of which have to be experienced by the user.
8.) Other special requirements: Some users have some special requirements, such as being able to print barcodes, print graphics, etc., which can be selected from different products of different thermal paper manufacturers.
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