Drum Printer

What Does Drum Printer Mean?

The term “drum printer” refers to different types of printer designs throughout the modern digital age that have featured drum installations or setups. Two very different types of drum printers represent landmarks in the process of building ever-more-sophisticated and advanced printers as digital technologies have evolved.

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Techopedia Explains Drum Printer

An older form of printer that is now considered obsolete was called a “drum printer” because it had printed characters etched on a physical drum that spun around and impacted paper in specific ways. A series of hammers behind the paper would press the paper onto the drum at the right time, to create text on a page. This mechanical and analog type of printer has long been out of date as newer inkjet and laser jet printers use more sophisticated imaging and printing technology.

A newer kind of drum printer is a laser printer that uses a drum to hold paper in place. In this newer type of drum laser printer, the drum receives an image from the laser and transfers it onto the paper. The drum is coated with photoreceptor materials. The drum gets an electrostatic charge, and light from the laser removes that charge to create positive and negative areas to which the toner sticks.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…