Things to keep in mind while selecting a billing printer

by Tecronicles .com Technology News Site

Businesses are increasingly going mobile with smartphones cleverly armed with Point of Sales or Spot-Billing applications, and portable receipt printers for generating a printed receipt there and then, to complete the transaction. The new buzz word in business is “Mobility”; field force is increasingly replacing back office personnel, so as to always be agile and customer-facing. Similarly, bulky and wired office equipment is being replaced by Smartphones always connected in real-time to the cloud. Even payment instruments such as card readers, and billing printer s are going Mobile – battery enabled and portable – hand-carry or belt-attachable type rugged, dust-proof, rechargeable devices.

With this kind of intensive dependence on receipt printers of businesses, especially in the field of Utility Billing or any kind of customer-facing cash-collection business, there are several things to keep in mind when selecting receipt printers.

Strong Battery Backup: The MAH or Mili Ampere hours describes the battery capacity of any portable device. The current norm for receipt printers is a minimum of 1500MAH or 1.5 AH.

This is directly proportional to the number of hours the printer can function without a recharge after it has been fully charged once. It is important to note that if the battery of a receipt printer doesn’t last for at least 5-6 hours while normally printing all the while, giving gaps of few seconds between prints, then it is likely that the MAH specified is either low (and in some cases untruthfully declared at a higher value), or that there is a problem with the Charger or the physical power socket that connects the printer and the charger, while charging the receipt printer.

In the latter cases, the end result is that the charger is unable to fully charge the battery of the device, and hence, even though the battery is strong enough to withhold charge, it is not being given enough charging current. Thermal Vs. Dot-matrix Printing Technology: The most common receipt printers being used today are of a 58mm width, and are based on Thermal Print technology. Using this technology, which by the way bluprints.in use in all its devices, the paper roll is thermally coated with a chemical, that selectively goes dark in places where the thermal printer-head gives a High signal. The remaining dots in each line remain unaffected. Thus, the print is generated by without the need for any cartridge or Ink, making this type of printers the most popular for receipt printing applications.

The dot-matrix or ink printers, on the other hand, require the user to always have cartridges handy. Changing the cartridges can also be a messy process. Dot-matrix printers are also very noisy and much slower in generating a print (the fastest printer-heads offer speed of 1 line/3 seconds), as compared to thermal printers (speeds of up to 100 mm per second, making them at least 10 times faster.

More fun facts: Why Receipt printer Succeeds