About Laser Printers

Introduction

A laser printer is a printer that utilizes laser beam to generate high quality text, images and graphics on a paper or drum. The printers laser uses a xerographic process of printing  whereby, the image is generated by the direct scanning of the laser beam across the photoreceptor of the printer. Whenever light from the printers laser hits, it modifies electrical charge which is found on the drum making it roll through the toners reservoir before it is picked up by the drum's charge portions. Lastly, the toner is conveyed to the paper by a combination of heat and pressure. Laser printers are sometimes referred to as page printers. This is because the whole page is passed on the drum before the toner is applied. The color printers laser usually uses four toners to print full color, hence they are four to 10 times more expensive.

History

The very first laser printer was invented in 1969 by a researcher and engineer known as Gary Starkweather. It was given the name EARS. Gary came up wit the printers design by adding a laser beam to the Xerox photocopier. He immobilized the imaging system and crafted a spinning drum which had 8 mirrored sides and a printers laser that mainly focused on the drum. The printers laser produced light that bounced off the spinning drum and swept across the page as it moved through the copier.

In 1976, the IBM 3800 was introduced. It was the very first commercial implementation of a printers laser. It combined the use of laser technology and xerography hence ideal for high volume printing due to its high printing speed. Later, the xerox star 8010 was released. It was designed to use an individual computer as well as for office use. But it was relatively expensive thus was used by a very small number of institutions and businesses. Much later, the Hewlett- Packard's Laser-jet was introduced. It used a Canon engine that was controlled by HP software.

Features

• The control panel: contains a number of buttons but the most essential are the job cancel and go buttons. The job cancel button is used to cancel currently printing work. When a printing work is cancelled, a light at the control panel will blink until the work is totally cleared from the printer and the computer. On the other hand, the go button is used to authorize printing, resume printing if some work had been paused or when there is some unprinted work in the e printer. The go button is also used to print a demo page, for this to happen; the printers laser ready light should be on.
• Cartridge: The cartridge has a monthly duty cycle of eight thousand pages thus eliminating the need of changing the cartridge from time to time. Its monthly capacity can vary from 2MB to 8MB to 64MB. However, it is expandable to up to 575MB. A person is free to chose the type that sots his/her volume of work.
• Image enhancement technology: It assists in adjusting the image to sharper focus. One can adjust the printers laser depending on how he wants the image or print out to appear.
• Use of toners: Unlike other types of printers, the printers laser does not use the ink cartridge. It uses a toner which is a fine black powder used for printing. This helps to solve the problem of ink spillage.
• Handy software: These are handy tools that monitor toner cartridge, allows different types of template to be printed and adds other useful features that assist people to utilize the printers laser.

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