Type-Wheel Printer (Daisy-Wheel)

A type-wheel printer works exactly like an electronic typewriter, i.e. the characters will be punched through a ribbon (mostly blue or black) onto the paper. The control of the printhead from left to right is performed by a motor and the punching of the characters is done via an electro magnet. The characters (also called types) are located on a wheel that gets positioned in the proper location.

Although the typeface and the printing quality is better than that of a dot-matrix printer, the possibilities of the printout are limited to the 92 distinct characters and punctuation marks of the font on the typewheel.

Advantages

• Low maintenance
• Low costs
• Can create carbon copies
• Can use fan-fold paper and heavy paper grades
• Better print quality than a dot-matrix printer

Disadvantages

• Noisy printing
• No graphics
• Limited number of characters/types
• The character set is changed by replacing the daisy wheel

Type-wheel printer models

• Commodore: CBM8026, CBM8027, CBM 8028, CBM 8229 (CBM 8028 with 16 KByte memory), DPS-1101