Stepper motors were and still are often used in computer printers, optical scanners, and digital photocopiers to move the <answer>optical scanning element</answer>, the print head carriage (of dot matrix and inkjet printers), and the platen or feed rollers. Likewise, many computer plotters (which since the early 1990s have been replaced with large-format inkjet and laser printers) used rotary stepper motors for pen and platen movement; the typical alternatives here were either linear stepper motors or servomotors with closed-loop analog control systems.
In scanners, what do stepper motors move?
optical scanning element