Karmakaze Designs

Thermal printer paper is one of the contributions of modern chemistry to retail commerce. The use of inkless printers and tiny, inexpensive thermal paper rolls lowers costs and reduces downtime for many of today’s point of sale (POS) machines. Things like automated gas pumps, ATMs, cash registers, and credit card authorization machines all use embedded thermal printers to print out customer receipts.

The invention of thermal paper also helps reduce equipment costs. The thermal printer is a much simpler device than ink printers and as such has fewer moving parts. The simpler design makes them less expensive than conventional printers, and fewer moving parts means that thermal printers have fewer parts to wear out, so they break down less often than ink printers.

Fewer break downs is another factor in the lower maintenance requirements of thermal printers. The fact that they don’t need to have ink cartridges or printer ribbons replaced is another. Additionally, the use of continuous thermal paper rolls instead of discrete sheets of paper like many ink printers means less paper jamming since there are no corners or leading edges to get caught up in the printer mechanism. With conventional printers any of these issues could mean that the printer is out of service for some period of time resulting in either longer lines at the remaining POS lanes or even loss of business if back up devices are not available.

Thermal paper is bought in small rolls. The paper is often only two or three inches wide, just wide enough to print out a basic receipt or credit card authorization form. The compact size of the paper rolls means that hundreds of yards of thermal paper can be easily stored in the machine so that it runs out of paper less frequently as well. The paper is cut to length by the printer’s cutter bar, or held securely so the customer can tear it off easily against a stationary cutting bar. This allows the receipt to use only as much paper as is needed to print out the specific information required for each transaction, saving paper over machines that use standard sized individual paper sheets for every transaction without regard to the amount of printing on each sheet.

Thermal paper has the ink already inside a chemical coating on the paper. Heat initiates a chemical reaction that makes the ink visible in only those specific spots where heat was applied. By precisely controlling where the heat is applied, the ink only appears were the letters and numbers belong on the printed document. The rest of the paper remains blank even though the ink is still locked away in a chemical matrix.

Thermal paper has lowered costs and improved reliability for many of the most common POS devices in use today.