Is it possible to select a printer for a print job without forcing the user to select from a dialog box?

Not using the JDK1.1 style printing i.e. using java.awt.Toolkit.getPrintJob(). This does show the dialog.

Using the JDK1.3 style printing i.e. using java.awt.print.PrinterJob and java.awt.JobAttributes.setPrinter(string) it is possible to do what you want.

Please see-

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/awt/JobAttributes.html#setPrinter(java.lang.String)