How a Laser Printer Works

Introduction

Laser printers are a type of printer that are widely used in offices and schools.

Main uses

• Offices
• Schools
• Shop POS printers

Advantages

• Very fast printing
• Cheap to print out large volumes
• Due to the fusing process the toner does not run if the paper gets wet.

Disadvantages

• More expensive to buy the printer than inkjet and the toner cartridges are more expensive to buy.

How a laser printer works

Raster image processing

In this step the document to be printed is converted to a page description language ready for previewing on the computer. This is then converted to a raster image specific to the printer’s needs and is then transmitted to the printer’s raster memory, ready for printing.

The raster image is similar to a bitmap file, showing what colour is to be printed at each exact position on the page.

Charging

In this step the

Exposing

Developing

Transferring

Fusing

Cleaning and recharging

Past Paper Questions

June 17 Paper 11 Qn2