Brother EP-20 Typesample with ribbon on plain paper
Brother EP-20 Typesample minus the ribbon on cheap thermal fax paper.
More thoughts on Thermal Baby Wedges: Ephemeral, Schmephemeral!
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That dot matrix brings back tons of memories.
Neat looking wedge. I never saw one that ran on battery power. I do kind of like the neat sound wedges make even though I never kept one that crossed my path for my collection.
This reminds me of my ’80s Apple ImageWriter, printing in draft mode.
The print quality is so much better with the thermal fax paper – thanks for including the before and after comparison.. Now that it’s more readable, I sort of love the dot-matrix hacking-the-mainframe font. You’ll have to let us know how battery life testing goes – no fair cheating with Magic Batteries.
From what I have read, normal thermal paper has a quite short lifetime. Meaning, the letters printed on thermal paper by heat will disappear after a very short time and the text will be no longer readable. This can be weeks if the paper is cheap stuff. Also, exposing it to sunlight will shorten the time even more.
So, if anyone considers to write a long-time novel with thermal paper, maybe think about it twice … ;-)
A friend just bought a Canon Typestar 110 for me, in original box, with a couple of extra ribbons. It was marked $15, and I said see if they will take $10. They did.
I can’t wait to get it and try it with fax paper. We may have to get together and compare. When’s the next Type-In in Phoenix?
(I think I have a couple rolls of pink fax paper).
Ooh, neato. There’s a couple hunters on the TWDB that have variations of the Canon Typestar, and I believe the 3-digit models have extended high-resolution font sets (some can even print clip-art graphics). Nice choice!
Re: the next Type-in – none are planned as of yet, but it’s getting close to time to start the ball rolling. Stay tuned here for further updates. (:
Sheets of thermal paper are great too – use ’em like regular paper, photocopy anything you want to keep for more than a year! :-)
I’ve just been testing my Japanese Typestar (CanoWord PEN24) using the dedicated carbon ribbons and LIFE Typewriter Paper, a Japan-made paper with a very smooth finish. It prints every bit as clearly as using thermal paper with no ribbon. I’m sold on this and am starting to hoard the ribbon cassettes in earnest now! :-D
I’m finding the 4 D batteries in my Typestar Japanese version are going for days. I also need to do a rigorous test so I can try it out on an airplane. Did you follow up on your tests at all Ted?
Those batteries are still going (:
These babies really sip the juice!