Dot Matrix printers - any preferences?

TempestSabre · 31-05-2006 8:47am #1

Need a Dot Matrix printer. Anyone any preferences or are they all the same?

irlrobins · 31-05-2006 9:02am

Not so many of these around now. Epson or Oki are prob your best bet.

Dummy · 31-05-2006 9:40am

What s/ware are you going to use it with?

If for customised stationary (invoices / payslips) then OKI ML 3321. But use the Epson emulation and Epson driver for FX286e.

TempestSabre · 31-05-2006 9:49am

Crystal Reports. I've tested with a Oki ML 3320 (I assume a 3321 is a later one) and it works ok. These are data forms, similar to an invoice of sorts.

Dummy - can you elaborate?

I need to buy a new one for now and perhaps even a few more later. I assume they are all equally noisy? Where do you get cabinets for them?

Dummy · 31-05-2006 10:36am

The s/ware I use my Oki with requires customised stationary (Invoices & Payslips). The dimensions of this customised stationary is hard-coded into the s/ware.

As far as remeber the Oki driver did not allow the direct print option. We changed the printers emulation to the Epson and used the Epson FX286e driver which does allow the direct print option.

To print to the customised stationary we use the direct print option in the driver which allows the pre-coded stationary dimensions to take affect and also allows for a faster print.

As for cabinets - I don't have one.

TempestSabre · 31-05-2006 10:41am

Ok. Thanks for that, thats excellent info.

Dummy · 31-05-2006 10:45am

Best of luck

astrofool · 31-05-2006 11:03am

Epson with USB seem to work with least amount of effort. Parallel ports are maddening to use with Dot Matrix when something goes slightly wrong. Not as bad as the old days though, when using the wrong command would make them print gibberish for 30 minutes with no way to flush the on board memory

Elara have a good selection: http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=PRT00056 is a nice cheap epson USB.

irlrobins · 31-05-2006 11:05am

astrofool wrote:

no way to flush the on board memory

Not even with the ol unplug for 2 mins solution?

Occidental · 31-05-2006 11:08am

TS,

The OKI 3320 is 80 character while the 3321 is 132. Oki's and Epson are generally good, although the last few LX300+'s we've had have been rubbish, the original LX300 being a much more reliable printer.

zilog_jones · 31-05-2006 12:33pm

How do dot matrix printers still cost so much?! It's not like the technology has advanced in them (if at all outside adding USB) in the past decade or so.

irlrobins · 31-05-2006 12:35pm

Limited market for them, so producers probably don't have the same economies of scale as they do producing laser or inkjet printers.

liamo · 31-05-2006 12:38pm

We've used the 3320 on numerous client sites for printing cheques and other forms on pre-printed stationery from Crystal Reports.

We've run into issues with the printer driver not recognising the paper size (non-A4) being sent to it by Crystal and we've had to come up with work-arounds. But in general we've found them to be excellent once we get them set up and configured correctly.

Make sure you get the latest driver for the 3320 as the one in XP is well out of date.

Regards,

Liam

TempestSabre · 31-05-2006 1:02pm

liamo wrote:

We've used the 3320 on numerous client sites for printing cheques and other forms on pre-printed stationery from Crystal Reports.

We've run into issues with the printer driver not recognising the paper size (non-A4) being sent to it by Crystal and we've had to come up with work-arounds. But in general we've found them to be excellent once we get them set up and configured correctly.

Make sure you get the latest driver for the 3320 as the one in XP is well out of date.

Regards,

Liam

Actually thats partly my concern as we'll be printing long jobs (A4 pages though) out on continous 4 part paper. I've heard they have a tendency to go out of synch with the end of page etc.

astrofool · 31-05-2006 1:13pm

Some of them will detect the perforation and compensate as needed.

TempestSabre · 31-05-2006 1:16pm

astrofool wrote:

Some of them will detect the perforation and compensate as needed.

I'll look out for that cheers. Any example models off the top of your head?

Dummy · 31-05-2006 1:41pm

TempestSabre wrote:

Actually thats partly my concern as we'll be printing long jobs (A4 pages though) out on continous 4 part paper. I've heard they have a tendency to go out of synch with the end of page etc.

Are you sure it's A4 and not Letter? Learned that lesson the hard way.

TempestSabre · 31-05-2006 1:58pm

Well thats what the system is designed to output. If the paper is Letter then we'll make provision for that.

astrofool · 31-05-2006 2:09pm

Even after 2 minutes

They were ancient Tandy machines if I remember right, you'd just keep feeding it the same set of paper over and over till it finished.

The FX-890 is an updated version of the FX-880 which i've used successfully, it seems to handle page transitions well. It seems to work by detecting the paper, rather than perforations, and can be adjusted via a micro-adjust function, manual is here: ftp://download.epson-europe.com/pub/download/81/epson8080eu.pdf

Dot Matrix printers - any preferences?

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