All about Dot Matrix Receipt Printer

A Dot Matrix Receipt Printer uses a print head with tiny metal pins that moves back-and-forth on the page and prints by impact, striking against a coloured ink ribbon against the paper. They are commonly used in the Point of Sale industry at places including Cafes & Restaurants in the kitchen. Th reason they are so common in kitchen areas is because they have the ability to use multi ply paper rolls (duplicate & Triplicate) so copies can be passed on to different sections. Another reason major reason is that they are not affected with high temperatures such as stream from fryers, excessive heat from grills and on the pass using heat lamps. If you were to use thermal paper in these areas, the paper rolls would just turn black and become unreadable.

An Impact Receipt Printer uses an ink ribbons which are available in colours including Purple, Black & Red/Black. The Red & Black ribbons are the most common for POS Printing because they allow you to have food/drink modifications to print in a Red colour which can be easily read which prompts the chef or cook that there are additions, deductions or cooking instructions against a particular menu items. An example of this would be having a menu item call steak which prints in a standard black colour, how they have it cooked printing in red and any sides also printing in red. This would prompt the kitchen staff how to prepared the item from the menu.

An Impact (Dot Matrix) POS Printer is available in USB, Serial, Parallel, Wireless and Ethernet (LAN). The most common interface for Point of Sale is Ethernet/LAN which is a network printer connected via cable to a router. Many iPad POS Systems use this interface because the iPad (or Tablet) can connect to a wireless access point (via Wifi) to communicate with the printer but you must check with the Software vendor as to which Dot Matrix Receipt Printer is compatible with their Software. Major brands that developers generally use are Bixolon, Epson & Star Micronics.

If you a looking to replace or upgrade your impact printer, you can contact Cash Register Warehouse to ensure you are choosing the correct printer for your application.