A printer that uses heat to transfer an impression onto paper.
There are two kinds of thermal printers: - thermal wax transfer:
a printer that adheres a wax-based ink onto paper. A thermal
printhead melts wax-based ink from the transfer ribbon onto the
paper. When cool, the wax is permanent. This type of thermal
printer uses an equivalent panel of ink for each page to be
printed, no matter if a full page or only one line of print is
transferred. Monochrome printers have a black page for each page
to be printed, while color printers have either three (CMY) or
four (CMYK) colored panels for each page. Unlike thermal dye
transfer printers , also called dye sublimation printers, these
printers print images as dots, which means that images must be
dithered first. As a result, images are not quite photo-
realistic, although they are very good. The big advantages of
these printers over thermal dye transfer printers are that they
don't require special paper and they are faster. - direct
thermal: a printer that prints