The laser print process is fundamentally different than inkjet, which uses precision streams of ink for print on paper. The sequence of image processing steps in the laser printer is: processing, charging, exposure, development, transfer, and bonding.
Laser printers have the most complicated imaging process, but if you understand the process, you will be more equipped to fix common problems with your laser printer.
While laser printers can be used to print original documents or copies of documents, they always need to begin with a digital image.
Some businesses have switched over to using laser printers, only printing a few copies separately, but impact printers are still used by a few businesses.
A duplex (not a feedbelt) attachment is required for printing double-sided output in a laser printer. After printing one side, paper is fed into the duplexing assembly, which turns the paper over and feeds it back through the printer for the second time.
Manual duplex printing is achieved either by changing a print setting on a printers properties, or printing on one side, then taking that same paper and putting it back in the printer to print the other side.
After the document is printed, electrical charges are removed from a selenium-coated drum, and the excess toner is collected. When a document is sent to the laser printer, the laser beam draws the document onto a selenium-coated drum using electric charges.
This interacts with -100VDC parts of the laser that are exposed, which allows the toner to adhere to the EP drum. The toner particles are given negative charges within the toner cartridge, and when they appear on the development drum, they are electrostatically attracted to the image latent.
The region of electrically charged surface that is struck by a light beam, however, is temporarily uncharged, and the toner is forced onto the drum by a developer roller coated with the toner, which moves from rubbery roller surface to charged part of its surface in the following stage.
Laser printers may either use one color of toner to produce monochromatic images, or they may use four colors to produce full-color images via the printing of the four-color process (each of the processing colors has their own color and their own bitmap; laser printers that use one imaging drum will repeat the exposure, development, and transfer steps for each color, whereas other laser printers will have an imaging drum per color, along with a transfer band that passes in sequence between each toner roll to the charged portions of their surfaces.
Laser printers can use one colour of toner to create monochromatic images or use four toners to create full colour images through four-colour process printing (each of the process colours has its own colour and its own bitmap ; laser printers with one image drum will repeat the expose, develop, and transfer steps for each colour, while other laser printers will have one image drum per colour and a transfer belt , which passes between each toner cartridge and image drum in succession before transferring the four layers of toner onto the substrate in a single step ).
The average running cost per page is typically a little cheaper, although both laser printers and toner cartridges are expensive up front, since the laser toner cartridges produce far more sheets compared with the toner, and have higher initial costs.
Inkjet printers can match the printing quality of laser printers, and practically all current-day inkjets are capable of printing text and both black and color photos. A laser (hence the term laser printer) or LED exposes light and writes a page to be printed, line-by-line, onto an EP (ElectroPhotographic) drum.
Laser printers are like copy machines In a copy machine, bright light is used to create a precise replica of a printed page. Laser printing produces high-quality text and graphics (and medium-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth across a negatively charged cylinder called the drum to determine the image with different charges. How the Laser Printer Works When you print anything, your computer sends an enormous flood of electronic data–typically several megabytes or millions of characters–to your laser printer. To understand, you have to know about each of the four main types of printers (laser, inkjet, thermal, and impression) and what makes them different.