Glossary

Banding
Bands of discrete color or tone that appear when an inkjet cannot reproduce a smooth graduation from one color to another. Instead there are noticeable jumps between one value and the next.

Bitmap
File in which every pixel on screen is represented by a piece of data in memory, usually graphics, although some audio formats are described as bitmapped as well. As opposed to a vector image, in which only a description of the image is stored.

Bleeding
A print distortion where adjacent colors run and merge into one another, sometimes caused by excess ink or paper which is too absorbent.

Bubble Jet
Canon's trade name for its thermal drop on demand inkjet printer technology. The ink is heated, which produces a bubble that expands and ejects the ink out of the nozzle. As the bubble cools, the vacuum created draws fresh ink back into the nozzle.

Cartridge
The actual encasement, which holds the ink. Some cartridges function as an "ink tank", while others actually contain a print-head assembly that disperses the ink on the paper.

Cartridge Core
Empty laser toner or inkjet cartridge.

Centronics Interface
This 36-pin connection was designed by Centronics Corp. and has become the preferred way to attach most printers to a PC parallel data port.

CMY
Single cartridge color inkjets use the Cyan Magenta Yellow model. Black, referred to as composite black, is made up from the three colors. Dye-sublimation uses these three colors on the print ribbon.

CMYK
The Cyan Magenta Yellow Black model is for standards in color inkjet printing. These are the four basic process colors used in conventional color printing. Overlaying or dithering combinations of these four inks in different proportions can create a vast range of colors.

Composite Black
The creation of black from cyan, magenta and yellow inks. Mixing inks is not a perfect operation, and composite black is often muddy. This is why the CMYK model is used in professional printing.

Contone
A technique used by color printing technologies, which is a compromise between increased halftone cell size (giving more shades per halftone cell) and increased resolution (giving less invisible halftone cells).

Core
Refers to the empty cartridge shell, regardless whether it is an inkjet or laser cartridge.

Developer
A mixture of (non magnetic) toner and carrier.

Diffuse Dither
A method for printing continuous-tone images on laser printers in which the grayscale information is represented by randomly located printer dots. Diffuse dithers do not photocopy well because of the small, random, dot location in the image.

Dithering
A half toning method where several dots of the primary colors are printed in various patterns to give the impression of a larger color spectrum.

Dot Matrix Printers
One of the earliest mass-market attempts at reliable, high-speed printing, dot matrix printers used a set of pins that could be fired rapidly at an inked ribbon to form characters on an underlying sheet of paper. While speedy, these printers suffered from relatively poor print quality. Even higher-end models with as many as 48 pins could produce only near-letter-quality text. Lower-end, 9-pin models were suitable only for printing drafts. If you're looking to print on continuous sheets of paper or are interested in making banners, dot matrix might be the way to go. They're also typically the most affordable printers.

DPI
Dots Per Inch: a unit of measure used to describe the resolution of images produced by printers or other output devices. The printed dots from a 600 dpi printer are far smaller than the dots created by a 300dpi printer. As a result, the output is smoother and more detailed, while dithering patterns will deliver more realistic colors.

Dye-Sublimation
A special print technology used for demanding graphic arts and photographic applications that require continuous tone output.

Feathering
A term used when describing printed text quality. Feathering occurs when deposited ink follows the contours of the paper. Depending on the viscosity of the ink, the rougher the grain of the paper the more pronounced the feathering would be.

Generic Toner Kit
This is a copy of the OEM toner kit, made by a third party manufacturer to OEM Specifications. Does not require recycling.

Halftone
Different-sized black dots produced by turning particular dots on and off during printing, either on a laser printer, an image setter, or a printing press. The dots repeat in a regular pattern, creating the illusion of continuous tone. Color inkjets use their process colors in a similar scheme. Other colors are produced by laying down patterns of the process color dots, varying the pattern and ratio of each color. Halftone dots are not the same as printer dots.

Ink
A specially formulated liquid, usually with a dye base. Majorities of inks are water-based liquids.

Inkjet Printers
Unlike dot matrix printers, which rely on physical contact with an inked ribbon and paper, inkjet printers simply spray ink in a series of dots to form characters. The principal of heating ink to create a bubble and force it through the jet. The bubble is cooled and then bursts onto a piece of paper. This can occur anywhere from 4000 to 6000 times per second. While early inkjets were prone to clogging, they were capable of delivering good print speeds and relatively high-quality text and graphics. Today's best ink jet printers have eliminated most of the clogging problems, rival laser printers for text quality, and can also produce color images with near-photographic quality--all for even less money than a low-end laser printer.

Jet
Commonly referred to as a nozzle.

Jet Pak
A mail away system to professionally re-manufacture an inkjet cartridge. Saves you... guess what! (See "Money" below).

Laser Printer
While considerably more complex and expensive than most other common printer types, laser printers are capable of producing extremely high-quality text and graphics (including color) at fantastic speeds. A type of printer that utilizes a laser beam to produce an image on a drum. The light of the laser alters the electrical charge on the drum wherever it hits. The drum is then rolled through a reservoir of toner, which is picked up by the charged portions of the drum. Finally, the toner is transferred to the paper through a combination of heat and pressure. This is also the way copy machines work.

Laser Toner
A printing technology which uses very fine electro-magnetically charged particles (usually called toner). The particles are dispersed onto the paper and heated to a temperature that causes these particles to become embedded into the paper. This process is called fusing.

LED Printer
An electro photographic printer that uses a matrix of LEDs as its light source. The LED mechanism is much simpler than its laser printer counterpart. A stationary array of LEDs is used instead of numerous moving parts, and the LEDs are selectively beamed onto the drum. In electronics terms, a diode is a semiconductor device through which current can go in only one direction. As a side effect, light-emitting diodes produce either visible or infrared light. LED printers utilize the latest printing technique, producing laser-quality printouts while utilizing less energy. LEDs require very little power and are often used as indicator lights, including (most likely) the drive access lights on your computer. LEDs are also found in some "laser-quality" printers.

LPT1
The first parallel or printer port on a PC.

MICR Toner
(Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) Special magnetic Toner used in printing bank checks on plain paper.

Micro fine Toner
Special Fine grain (small particle size) toner used in printers with high resolution.

Money
Something you work very hard for and we in turn make every effort to save it for you. "Money Saved" is a measure of your shopping savvy.

Nozzle
Tiny tubes, which allow for a heated ink bubble to travel through as it cools. Also, the one vital area of the print head which needs to be cleaned occasionally or replaced.

OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer

Parallel Port
An I/O channel for a parallel device, like a printer, which sends and receives data eight bits at a time over 8 separate wires. Maximum throughput is around 500Kbit/s. Increasingly, other devices such as removable storage drives; scanners etc. share the printer parallel port using a 'pass through' mechanism.

PCL
Printer Control Language: a protocol designed by Hewlett-Packard to allow PCs to communicate with its laser printers. PCL has become a de facto standard for laser and inkjet printers and is supported by virtually all printer manufacturers. 'HP compatible' or 'LaserJet compatible' means that a printer supports the PCL command set.

PDL
Page Description Language: a language for describing the layout and contents of a printed page used with laser printers. The best-known PDLs are Adobe PostScript and Hewlett-Packard PCL (Printer Control Language). Both PostScript and modern versions of PCL are object-oriented, describing a page in terms of geometrical objects such as lines, arcs, and circles.

Pigment Inks
While conventional inks are essentially oil-based dyes, pigment inks consist of tiny chunks of solid pigment suspended in a liquid solution. According to their proponents, pigment inks offer richer, deeper colors and have fewer tendencies to run, bleed or feather.

PostScript
A page description language developed by Adobe. Generally used by laser printers, PostScript is becoming increasingly common in high-end inkjets too.

PPF
(Plain Paper Fax) Usually based on a laser printer, thermal transfer or inkjet printer.

Price-Less Inkjet
A company, which wants to save you money on printing costs. Also the company responsible for this glossary.

Print-alignment
The proper setting of the ink nozzles and the print head. May at times be out of whack if cartridge was not properly inserted into the "cartridge carriage". Will definitely be out of whack if Printer is suddenly dropped.

Printer Dot
The individual pixel in a halftone image. The size of a printer dot is variable, ranging from zero (all white) to the size of the halftone screen (all black).

Print Head
The important part of a printer, which contains electrical circuitry and the nozzles to heat and disperse the ink during printing. You should avoid touching or cleaning the print- head unless you have an approved solution.

Process Colors
The four primary ink colors (CMYK) used in color printing.

Raster Image
An image defined as a set of dots/pixels in a column-and-row format. Rasterisation is the process of determining values for the dots/pixels in a rendered image. See also Bitmap.

Rendering
The process of translating high-level print commands into a raster image.

Resolution
The number of dots per unit of area. A raster image with a finer grid contains more dots and has a higher resolution, capable of reproducing more detail in an image.

RGB
Red-Green-Blue: By varying the intensity of each of these colors in a single pixel, the human eye can be fooled into seeing a wide range of colors.

Thermal Transfer
A printer technology that uses heat to transfer colored dye onto paper.

Thermal Transfer Ribbon
A wide ribbon, looks like carbon paper but operates under the principal of applied heat. Usually this product is found in Plain Paper Fax Machines.

Thermo Auto chrome
A print technology which has emerged in digital camera companion printers and which is claimed to produce photographic-quality output on a par with the more well-known dye-sublimation technique.

Toner
A special type of ink used by copy machines and laser printers. Toner consists of a dry, powdery substance that is electrically charged so that it adheres to a drum, plate, or piece of paper charged with the opposite polarity.

True Black
Black produced by separate black ink rather than the 'composite black' produced from a mixture of cyan, magenta and yellow. See also Composite Black.

Virgin Cartridge
A toner cartridge that was used once and not yet recycled.