First, you need to understand the principles and composition of thermal paper and ribbons. Thermal paper is composed of a base paper, a thermal coating and a protective layer. The thermal coating contains a thermal dye and a color generating agent, which chemically reacts to form a pattern by heating the print head. Ribbon is a material similar to ink that leaves an imprint on the paper through heat or pressure during the printing process.
In actual use, if ribbon is used for printing on thermal paper, the following problems may occur:
- Unrecognizable: Due to the different principles of carbon ribbon and thermal paper, printing on thermal paper with carbon ribbon may not achieve the expected effect, or even be unrecognizable.
- Damage to the print head: The material in the ribbon is relatively viscous. If the ribbon is contaminated on the thermal head, it may cause damage to the print head and affect the life and performance of the device.
- Affect the printing quality: Because the ribbon and the thermal coating cannot be well combined, problems such as blurring and smudges are prone to occur during the printing process, affecting the printing quality.
To sum up, thermal paper cannot be printed with ribbon. If you want to use a dot matrix printer to print on thermal paper, you can choose other types of equipment such as dot matrix printers, and you need to use specially adapted thermal ribbons. In addition, when choosing thermal paper, you should also consider its scope of application and performance indicators to avoid choosing the wrong material, which will lead to poor printing results.
In general, thermal paper and carbon ribbon have different principles and compositions, and they need to be selected and matched according to the actual situation when using them. During the printing process, attention should be paid to the matching of materials and the care and maintenance of equipment to ensure printing effects and equipment life.