Printing is a pretty simple concept. After all it is just putting ink on a page. Laser printers, like all those featured on the our website are complicated in design yet actually very simple in concept. The process from digital file to printed document has gone through many iterations and is now as streamlined as it can be. To some people a printer is just a blackbox, you put papers in, connect it to a network and miraculously, printed documents come out for your use. This short article looks at the anatomy of a common printer.

When you send your digital file to a laser printer, the printer must take the entire file and commit it to its on-board memory ready for processing. This RAM (Random Access Memory) is stored on the printer’s system board and is connected to an input device such as a USB or network port. The amount of RAM directly affects how quickly data can be processed before sending it to be printed.

The actual print process begins after the full page has been transferred to the printer’s memory. Laser printers rely on static electricity and use this static electricity to attract toner to the paper in much the same way that a balloon will stick to a wall if you rub it against your hair or clothing a few times first; the atoms of the 2 objects have opposite electrical charges, so they attract each other.

MAIN PARTS OF A LASER PRINTER

1. Controller circuitry
2. Photoconducting drum
3. Charging roller
4. Laser beam
5. Rotation mirror
6. Developer roller
7. Toner hopper
8. Belt
9. Paper tray
10. Charging wire
11. Cleaning blade
12. Fuser

Once the toner has been transferred to the correct areas of the page, the paper then passes through the laser printers fuser which actually melts the toner to the page permanently. The page is then ejected from the printer.

The drum cartridge is simply a cylinder made of incredibly conductive material which interacts with a corona wire which carries electricity. Whilst the drum spins as electricity flows through the corona wire, the drum becomes positively charged. The Printers PCL or PostScript driver then informs the laser printer to focus on certain points on the drum in order to discharge certain pixels. These discharged areas are used to hold the toner in the correct place to then be transferred to the paper before being fused inside the laser printer by the fuser unit.

This article is part of Magnetone Singapore regular weekly post to educate and enlighten our customers on the world of print and how they can be more productive and effective with our components.