Once you print one thing, your pc sends an unlimited stream of digital information (sometimes just a few megabytes or million characters) to your laser printer. An digital circuit in the printer figures out what all this information means and what it must appear like on the page. It makes a laser beam scan backwards and forwards across a drum contained in the printer, building up a pattern of static electricity. The static electrical energy attracts onto the page a type of powdered ink called toner. Finally, as in a photocopier, a fuser unit bonds the toner to the paper.
Hundreds of thousands of bytes (characters) of knowledge stream into the printer from your computer. An electronic circuit within the printer (effectively, a small laptop in its own proper) figures out how one can print this data so it seems right on the page. The electronic circuit activates the corona wire. This is a excessive-voltage wire that gives a static electric cost to anything nearby. The corona wire fees up the photoreceptor drum so the drum features a optimistic cost unfold uniformly throughout its surface.
At the identical time, the circuit prompts the laser to make it draw the image of the page onto the drum. The laser beam does not actually transfer: it bounces off a shifting mirror that scans it over the drum. The place the laser beam hits the drum, it erases the constructive cost that was there and creates an space of negative cost instead. Step by step, an image of your complete page builds up on the drum: where the page needs to be white, there are areas with a positive charge; where the page must be black, there are areas of adverse charge.
An ink curler touching the photoreceptor drum coats it with tiny particles of powdered ink (toner). The toner has been given an electrical cost, so it sticks to the elements of the photoreceptor drum which have a damaging charge (keep in mind that opposite electrical fees attract in the same method that opposite poles of a magnet entice). No ink is interested in the parts of the drum that have a constructive charge. An inked image of the page builds up on the drum.
A sheet of paper from a hopper on the opposite aspect of the printer feeds up towards the drum. Because it moves along, the paper is given a robust electrical charge by one other corona wire. When the paper strikes close to the drum, its sturdy charge attracts the charged toner particles away from the drum. The image is transferred from the drum onto the paper but, for the moment, the toner particles are just resting evenly on the paper's surface. The inked paper passes through two hot rollers (the fuser unit). The warmth and pressure from the rollers fuse the toner particles completely into the fibers of the paper. The printout emerges from the side of the copier. Thanks to the fuser unit, the paper is still warm. It is actually sizzling off the press!