How Laser Printer Work

Ahmad Thariq Syauqi

Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Universitas Gadjah Mada
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
[email protected]

Abstract—Many from people use Laser Printer. But, most

people do not know how the laser printer work. Laser Printer
works not too complicated. There are at least two basic physics Figure 1. Various types of printer.
concepts are applied to the laser printer, it is Charge and Heat.
Charge is used to move the toner to the paper, while hot to II. LITERATURE REVIEW
strengthen toner adhesion to paper.
A. Electric charge theory
I. INTRODUCTION Electric charge is the physical property of matter that
causes it to experience a force when placed in an
In this modern era there is a lot of devices that have high electromagnetic field. There are two types of electric charges:
technology which is can help humans work. Not only related to positive and negative. Positively charged substances are
the ease, but also with time efficiency. In the field of repelled from other positively charged substances, but attracted
technology, we recognize a wide variety of output devices. The to negatively charged substances; negatively charged
output device is divided into several sections such as the output substances are repelled from negative and attracted to positive.
device in the form of text, output device in the form of An object is negatively charged if it has an excess of electrons,
graphics, output devices in the form of audio, and output and is otherwise positively charged or uncharged.
devices in form of video. From many such devices, one of
which is a printer. Printer also has several types such as ink-jet
B. Aplication of the difference in charge on a laser printer
printers, photo printers, laser printers, thermal printers, mobile
printers, label and postage printers, large-format printers, and
plotters. Especially the laser printer, unlike a regular printer,
laser printer uses a physics concept in its application. It is the
difference in charge. This concept is used to attach charged
toner particles to the paper that has been given the charge by
the laser. The laser printer itself has many primary components
such as paper transport, logic circuits, user interface, toner,
toner cartridges, photosensitive drum, the laser, primary
corona, transfer corona, fuser rollers, erase lamp, power supply,
drivers, and software.

Figure 2. Toner transfer process which is a difference in

charge theory concept
Laser printer uses the concept of the difference in charge in
practice. Higher-end machines use a positively charged transfer
roller on the back side of the paper to pull the toner from the
photoreceptor to the paper that had previously been given a
positive and negative charge by laser beam. So, toner with
positive charge will stick to the paper that has negative charge
because of the difference in charge possessed toner and paper.
 III. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES 10. The paper emerges from the side of the copier, but he
When you print something, your computer sends an paper is still warm.
information of electronic data (usually few megabytes or
million characters) to your laser printer. An electronic circuit in
the printer figures out what all this data means and what it
needs to look like on the page. It makes a laser beam scan back
and forth across a drum inside the printer, building up a pattern
of static electricity. The static electricity attracts onto the page
a kind of powdered ink called toner. Finally a fuser unit bonds
the toner to the paper. And this is related detail work of laser
printer :
1. Millions of bytes (characters) of data stream into the
printer from your computer.
2. An electronic circuit in the printer (effectively, a small
computer in its own right) figures out how to print this
data so it looks correct on the page
3. The electronic circuit activates the corona wire. This is
a high-voltage wire that gives a static electric charge to
anything nearby. Figure 3. The processes on Laser Printer
4. The corona wire charges up the photoreceptor drum so
the drum gains a positive charge spread uniformly IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
across its surface.
5. At the same time, the circuit activates the laser to make From the data obtained that the close connection to the
it draw the image of the page onto the drum. The laser physics concept of laser printers that are all around us. The
beam doesn't actually move: it bounces off a moving concept is the difference of the charge which exist on the toner
mirror that scans it over the drum. Where the laser and paper. Due to differences in the toner may stick to the
beam hits the drum, it erases the positive charge that paper. Not only that, after the toner sticking on the paper, toner
was there and creates an area of negative charge immediately tightened the paper by the fuser unit with a hot
instead. Gradually, an image of the entire page builds concept. So the toner can be stick strongly and emerges the
up on the drum: where the page should be white, there image that we want.
are areas with a positive charge; where the page should
be black, there are areas of negative charge. V. CONCLUSION(S)
6. An ink roller touching the photoreceptor drum coats it Many physics concepts used in the development of printers,
with tiny particles of powdered ink (toner). The toner especially laser printers. Which most at least use two basic
has been given a positive electrical charge, so it sticks concepts of physics in the form of a charge and heat. Charge is
to the parts of the photoreceptor drum that have a used to move the toner to the paper, while hot to strengthen
negative charge (remember the difference in charge toner adhesion to paper.
theory). No ink is attracted to the parts of the drum that
have a positive charge. An inked image of the page
builds up on the drum.
VI. REFERENCES
7. A sheet of paper from a hopper on the other side of the
printer feeds up toward the drum. As it moves along, [1] Shelly Cashman, “Discovering Computers 2011” .
the paper is given a strong positive electrical charge by [2] http://www.explainthatstuff.com/laserprinters.html accessed on 8th
another corona wire. October 2015, 6.15 PM.
8. When the paper moves near the drum, its positive [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printing accessed on 8th October
2015, 8.47 PM.
charge attracts the negatively charged toner particles
[4] http://dimasio.com/printing-theory-non-magnetic-carousel-color-toner-
away from the drum. The image is transferred from the part-4.html accessed on 8th October 2015, 8.58 PM, 1.42 PM.
drum onto the paper.
[5] http://www.certiguide.com/aplush/cg_aph_LaserPrinters.htm accessed
9. The inked paper passes through two hot rollers (the on 12th October 2015
fuser unit). The heat and pressure from the rollers fuse
the toner particles permanently into the fibers of the
paper.