Thread: Laser Printer

The term laser stands for light amplification by simulated emission of radiation. A laser printer operates on the principle of electro-photography used in photocopy machine. The primary principle at work in laser printer is static electricity, the same form of energy that you see in form of lightning that travels from a thundercloud to the ground. Static electricity is simply an electric charge induced or generated upon insulated object, such as human body. Since oppositely charged atoms (positive and negative) are attracted to each other, objects with opposite static electricity fields gets attached to each other. For document printing, laser printer uses the concept of opposite static electricity.



A laser printer is a page printer. It produces a finished page on each cycle. This is in contrast to the other types of printers that print single characters (daisy wheel, dot matrix) or all or part of a line of print (line printer, inkjet) on each cycle. A laser printer produces all the text and graphics of one full page at one time. It is a cut-sheet printer; its paper supply is a stack of individual sheets of paper. It can-not handle multipart forms or any type of continuous forms. The following image illustrates the printing process of laser printer

But before going into the working details of laser printer, let us list down some devices of laser printer.

• Laser

• Movable Mirror

• Lens

• Drum

• Corona Wire

• Toner

• Fuser

• Discharge Lamp

For time being just remember the list of devices. As we step into the discussion about the working of laser printer, you will gradually come to know about the role and function of each device.