According to the working principle to divide, can divide into the thermal printer and thermal transfer printer

Thermosensitive printer: refers to the special thermosensitive paper through the printing head heating of the text or bar code and other content printed out. Thermal printers have been widely used in POS terminal systems, banking systems, medical devices, and other fields. The thermosensitive printer can only use special thermosensitive paper, thermosensitive paper coated with a layer of heat will produce a chemical reaction and change color coating, similar to the photosensitive film, this layer of coating will change color after heat, the use of thermosensitive coating this characteristic, the emergence of thermosensitive printing technology.

Thermal transfer printer: thermal transfer printing refers to the transfer of the carbon belt/color belt inked layer to the label paper by means of heating the print head, and the color printed mainly depends on the color of the ribbon, generally black, there are other colors on the market such as green, yellow, red, etc. There are many types of paper for thermal transfer, such as coated paper, synthetic paper, silver dragon paper, PVT, PET, etc. These paper types require thermal transfer to print content.