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Laser Printers

Laser printers are among the most reliable personal printers around. The technology behind laser printing was patented by the Xerox Company in 1969. The process is fairly straightforward. A drum of semiconductor material such as selenium or silicon is given a coating of negative electric charge. Once the drum has been coated, a laser scans the drum removing the charge from any area of the page that is going to be printed on. What’s left behind is a small neutral charge in the shape of the printed area amidst a field of negative charge.

That step is where the laser comes into play in laser printers. Following successful cropping of the negative electron fields, ink with a negative charge is applied to the drum. Because the negatively charged ink is repelled by the negatively charged fields, the ink only sticks to the drum in those spots that have no charge. The drum can then be applied to the paper, along with heat, to fuse the ink into the paper. The process is very fast.

It’s so fast in fact that modern color laser printers can run off more than 100 pages a minute. This speed is what makes them ideal for commercial applications, such as at the office. They actually compete in efficiency with lithography in some cases. Since your average office won’t hold lithographic printing machinery, a laser printer is the next best thing.

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