I need a new printer, what do you all recommend???
How do laser printers work if they don't use ink cartridges? Kitty prints out a LOT of craft stuff and I cannot afford to replace the cartridges as often as she would like to print.
Stupid autocorrect, I had to re-edit this a bunch.
They work the same as digital copiers, this is from memory, so it may be a bit off.
Basic components;
Laser
Spinning mirror
Computer brain that turns the laser on and off very fast
The photowhatchamacallit drum
Developer
Toner
Corona wire that ionizes the paper so the toner jumps from the drum to the paper
Fuser assembly, which was an absolute ***** and a half to fix on the LaserJet 4 and 5 series, very good printers with very high duty cycles, much like the 4v.
The laser ionizes the drum where it hits it. The developer is basically just iron filings mixed with the toner, it is charged to carry the toner which is basically just powdered vinyl, and delivers the toner to the drum. The drum with the toner rolls across the ionized paper, which has a greater charge than the drum, so the paper steals the toner from the more weakly ionized drum. Now the paper with the toner (vinyl dust) goes through the fuser, which is usually two halogen lamps inside two metal tubes covered in teflon, where the toner is melted and crushed into the paper.
I remember fixing so many HP LaserJet iip printers which were expensive as Hell when new. They had a little $0.10 capacitor fail on the density control board, which was a $49 part. I just went down to the electronics supply warehouse and spent a couple of dollars on caps and saved my boss hundreds of dollars in just a couple of weeks. Those were nice little printers from the early 90's, very well made. My favorite printer was the LaserJet 4v, it had a life of half a million pages if you would just do the regular preventative maintenance. The big giant architectural firm plotters were just scaled up inkjet printers. Cool ****, those maintenance contracts were like cutting a fat hog in the ***.
