Printing China - About Printing News In China

VistaPrint is a large online print shop with 17 million customers, over 90 percent of the online printing market (although online printing represents no more than one percent of the total small business printing market), and 3.5 billion free business cards printed to date in its long-running viral marketing offer. VistaPrint total revenues have grown from $6.1 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2001 to $400.7 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008.

The company is an online supplier of printed and promotional materials as well as marketing services to small businesses (often referred to as SOHO) and consumers. In the 26th annual GAM 101 listing, the company is the 40th largest (by revenue) and the 4th fastest growing printing company in North America. It is also the 6th largest public company (by market cap). According to a compete.com survey, the vistaprint.com domain enjoyed 7,556,490 visits in June 2008. This was almost 50 times more than FedEx kinkos.com (163,989) during the same period.

Based on its most recent financials (for FY 2008, ending June 30, 2008), the company enjoyed the following notable metrics relative to its peers: 39% (revenue from outside the US), 65% (revenue from repeat customer purchases), 57% (year on year growth), 33,000 (average daily order volume), 4.5 million (new customers added)

Thermal printers print faster and quieter than dot matrix printers. They are also more economical since their only consumable is the paper itself. Even though the paper is more expensive, printers can be rapidly refilled, leading to almost zero downtime. Commercial applications of thermal printers include filling station pumps, information kiosks, point of sale systems, and voucher printers in slot machines.

Through the 1990s, many fax machines used thermal printing technology. Toward the beginning of the 21st century, however, thermal wax transfer, laser, and inkjet printing technology largely supplanted thermal printing technology in fax machines in order to allow plain-paper printouts.

The Game Boy Printer, made in 1998, was a small thermal printer used to print out certain elements from some Game Boy games.

Early formulations of the thermo-sensitive coating used in thermal paper were sensitive to incidental heat, abrasion, friction (which can cause heat, thus darkening the paper), light (which can fade printed images), and water. However, more modern thermal coating formulations have resulted in exceptional image stability; theoretically, thermally-printed text should remain legible at least 50 years.

Hospitals commonly record fetal ultrasound scan images on thermal paper. This can cause problems if the parents wish to preserve the image by laminating it using a traditional laminator, as the heat will cause the entire page to darken. It is advisable to test the laminator using thermal fax paper, or an unwanted thermal POS receipt to see if this happens. As before, an option is to make a permanent ink duplicate of the image, and laminate that, testing first to ensure that the copying process won’t darken theimage either.

Due to the effectiveness of thepaper used in thermal printers in absorbing oily substances, coupled by the fact that it is commonly used for printing receipts, makes the paper a suitable medium for removing facial oils when on the go.

Thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermo chromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an image. Two-color direct thermal printers are capable of printing both black and an additional color (often red), by applying heat at two different temperatures.

In order to print, one inserts thermo-sensitive paper between the thermal head and the platen. The printer sends an electrical current to the heating resistor of the thermal head, which in turn generates heat in a prescribed pattern. The heat activates the thermo-sensitive coloring layer of the thermo-sensitive paper, which manifests a pattern of color change in response. Such a printing mechanism is known as a thermal system or direct system.

The paper is impregnated with a solid-state mixture of a dye and a suitable matrix; a combination of a fluorine loco dye and phosphoric acid is an example. When the matrix is heated above its melting point, the dye reacts with the acid, shifts to its colored form, and the changed form is then conserved in detestable state when the matrix solidifies back quickly enough. See thermo chromos.

Controller boards are embedded with firmware to manage the thermal printer mechanisms. The Firmware can manage multiple bar code types, graphics and logos. They enable the user to choose between different resident fonts (also including Asian fonts) and character sizes.

Controller boards can drive various sensors like paper low, paper out, door open, top of form etc., and they are available with the most commonly used interfaces (RS232, Parallel, USB, wireless). For POS application some boards can also control the cash drawer.