Printers & Scanners

What is a color laser printer? Do I need one?

Although it’s called a laser printer, static electricity is the main phenomenon that occurs to make those images and text that appear on the page. When it comes to static electricity, opposites attract meaning only positive charges and negative charges stick to each other.
Negative can’t attach to negative and positive can’t attach to positive, for example, you could use two magnets and try to put them together, they’ll instantly pull away from each other since they’re identical.

A laser printer cleverly manipulates static electricity to attach toner to a sheet of paper. Laser toner is a powdered ink that’s more grain-like than regular ink. Here’s how a laser printer works:

1. The printer will need to processes an image or file from a device. Then it uses high-voltage circuits to provide an electrical charge to a few of its components.
2. There’s a “photoreceptor drum”, which is a revolving drum that’s given a positive electric charge.
3. A laser is them projected to beam onto a mirror. The mirror then reflects the laser onto the drum.
4. While the laser is active, the mirror moves in a way that it “draws” out the image on the drum.
5. Wherever the laser hits the drum itself, the positive charge is replaced by a negative charge which results in the mirror basically sketching a negatively-charged shape onto a positively charged canvas, which is where the attraction happens.
6. The toner is then released onto the drum. The toner is positive so it will only stick to the negatively charged parts of the drum that have been outlined by the laser. This allows the toner to basically color within the lines.
7. A sheet of paper is rolled through the printer. The paper is given a powerful negative charge.
8. As the paper passes the drum, the paper’s negative charge pulls grains of toner from the drum onto the sheet of paper. The toner grains sit on the surface of the paper.
9. The paper’s electric charge is removed. Then it passes through hot rollers that use heat and pressure to fuse the toner grains into the paper.