Laser Printers

Printing has been a part of man's life even since the Stone Age, whether it was writing on walls, tablets of stone, hieroglyphics, to a typewriter, or the printing press. In the past thirty years, technology has allowed printing to be taken to a whole other level. This new level is known as Laser Printing. Its process has made printing more efficient and cost effective for the quality of print.

There are six steps to the laser printing process, the first of which start with cleaning. Before the paper enters the printer, the drum, where the next image is to be stored before being put on the paper, must remove any excess toner from the surface of the drum by using either a blade or an AC voltage on a wire to discard the excess toner into a used toner container for later cleaning or discarding. The second step is called conditioning which involves the charging of the drum with a high voltage wire to give it a negative charge. Directly after this happens, the third step, writing, takes place. This is where a laser is shines down on the photosensitive drum to lower the negative charge of where the image will appear on the drum. In the fourth step, known as the developing phase, the toner is applied to the invisible image on the drum. The controller blade holds the toner at a microscopic distance from the drum. The toner is then transferred to the more positively charged part of the drum where the laser exposed light. Since the drum was charge with a strong negative charge, the paper the image will be placed on must have a positive charge, to attract the toner to it. This step is known as the transfer stage. The transfer roller places a strong positive charge on the paper before moving it further past the drum where the toner will be transferred to the paper. But the toner is not completely attached to the paper yet. The last stage is called the fusing. This is where the paper moves through the heated roller and the pressure roller, the loose toner is melted and fused with the fibers in the paper. The paper is then moved to the output tray as a printed page.

This process makes printing much simpler, efficient, and cost effective for the quality of the image that is given. Now that we know that a laser printer goes through many steps to reach its final goal, we understand how far the printing process has come.