Types of Laser Printers
Laser printers
use a laser beam to produce an image on a
photosensitive drum. Whenever light hits this photosensitive drum it
creates an electrical charge that also creates an image. The drum is
then rolled through a reservoir of toner that adheres to the
electrically charged image. The image is then fused to the paper through
heat and pressure. As laser printers print an entire page at a time as
opposed to just segments of a page (as is true with other printers) they
are sometimes called page printers.
To make things a bit confusing there are two types
of printing machines called laser printers that do not have a laser
inside them at all. One type uses an array of
LED's to expose the
photosensitive drum to enough light to replicate the image and the other
uses LCDs to accomplish the same purpose. The printed pages these
so-called laser printers are similar to the pages produced by machines
that do contain lasers.
Laser printers are often classified by their
potential to achieve a certain image resolution. The resolution is how
many dots per inch (dpi) they can reproduce during a single printing.
Resolutions range from 300 dpi at the low end to 1,200 dpi at the high
end. By comparison, offset printing usually prints at 1,200 or 2,400
dpi.
You can also buy a
color laser printer or a much
more inexpensive standard monochrome laser printer. The standard
monochrome laser printer uses a single toner and is a lot cheaper to
operate in terms of printing expenses. By contrast color laser printers
use four different colors of toner to print in full color. To put this
in perspective, color laser printers tend to be about five to ten times
as expensive as their monochrome siblings.
More About Laser Printers
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Color Laser Printers and Fonts