Field Trip Review
I found my visit to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) print facility to be very informative and intriguing. Before receiving info about the trip i’ve never even heard of the UFT or the fact that the have a state of the art print facility. As a designer it was quite the experience to see how and where a design of mine may be mass produced in the future. Some of the machines that we were shown were complex and all have many moving parts that when put in motion can create beautiful well detailed prints. There were many types of printers and machines but only few really peaked my interest and those were the Dye diffusion thermal transfer printer, Dot-matrix printer, and Laser printer.
- In a Dye diffusion thermal transfer printer a colored wax film or crayon is moved across the page. The pigment is heated and deposited on the page. The paper frequently goes through the printer four times, one time for each color.
- In a dot-matrix printer, a print head moves across the page. Characters or graphics are created by using a cluster of pins. These pins press an inked ribbon to the paper to create a dot. Each character or image is made out of a series of dots.
- Finally in Ā A roller is charged with electricity, and a laser is used to remove the charge from portions of the roller. Powdered ink (toner) sticks to the parts of the roller that were hit by the laser and is transferred from the roller to the paper. Then the ink is baked into the paper using a heater. Laser printers produce very high quality output and are very fast.
