Many people hate to waste paper. If a document does not
fill up a page, don't try to save the rest of the page to
print the next document. Tearing in the middle of a sheet
of paper, instead of the perforations, stresses all the
printer components in the paper path. Eventually, these
components will not pull paper right.To avoid tearing in
the middle of a sheet of paper, you often have to eject
a blank page so that tearing on the perforation is possible.
This is because the tractor is usually about an inch or
two above the platen. Because the tractor needs to grab
paper in order to pull paper, there has to be some wasted
paper between the top of the print head and the tractor
feed. This area is called the tear-off or dead zone. Actually,
only two or three inches need to be wasted each time. But,
then the page perforations do not match up any more. Following
is a summary of the attempts that have been made to solve
this problem:
* Removing the platen and replacing it with a tractor.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to make this process easy
and accurate enough to be worthwhile. Usually, the tractor
and platen were not put in correctly, and the quality of
the output suffered. Users stopped buying these printers
because they wanted the convenience of being able to use
tractor-feed and friction-feed paper.
* Mounting the tractor on the same bar as the platen. This
method proved to be an elegant solution. Not as much paper
was wasted, and the tractor and friction feed did not fight
each other. The paper did not crinkle as much, and the holes
did not strip out as much. Many people still love these
types of printers. The problem was that the tractor's sprockets
could not slide to accommodate different form widths.
* Using the tractor to push paper up to the print head
rather than pull it. The problem with this system is that
you still need a roller bar to hold paper against the platen
above the print head. This roller bar can be lifted automatically,
but when it breaks you are forced to lift the roller bar
by hand and insert the paper. Then, all the advantages of
the push tractor are gone.
* Pressing the tear button. This is a feature on some of
the more modern printers. When you push this button, the
printer temporarily pushes a piece of paper out of the printer
so that you can tear it off; then it pulls the paper back
into the printer so that it can print on the first line.
This feature is similar to automatic windows in a car; it
is marvelous when it works.
HINT During the sample printout demonstration of a printer,
watch
how much paper is wasted during the tear-off process.
The most successful attempt to stop wasting so much tractor
feed paper has been to try to make the paper path straight
and flat through the printer. Rather than curling around
a platen, the paper moves over the platen.With the straight-line
paper path, there are fewer problems with stencils and multipart
forms. However, the printer is unable to absorb the printing
noise. These printers are the noisiest ones on the market.
The other drawback is that the paper feeds in the front
and out the back, which tends to look messy. Tractor pulls
paper
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