Spray paint booths

Among the various computer peripherals that have been developed over the years, the printer is probably the most indispensable mainly. Printers have evolved a lot since their inception based on the underlying print technology they employ.

Laser printers, as the name suggests, 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 to produce the prints.

The popularity of laser printers is due to their significant advantages over other printers, particularly speed, precision and economy. Since a laser can move very quickly, it can write with much greater speed than an ink jet. Also, as the laser beam has an unvarying diameter, it can draw more precisely, without spilling any excess ink.

One of the chief characteristics of laser printers is their resolution i.e. how many dots per inch (dpi) they lay down. Laser printers make very small dots and place them very close together. Typical laser printers provide dot spacing between 300 and 1200 dots per inch (dpi). When the dot spacing gets up to 300 dpi or higher the printed images look crisp and sharp to our eyes.

Laser printers offer great versatility for to meet diverse printing requirements. They can easily print applications ranging from bar coded labels to MIS reports.

Laser printer speed can vary widely, and depends on many factors, including the graphic intensity of the job being processed. The fastest models can print over 200 monochrome pages per minute (12,000 pages per hour), while the fastest colour laser printers can print over 100 pages per minute (6000 pages per hour).

Laser printers produce very high-quality print and are capable of printing an almost unlimited variety of fonts. Most laser printers come with a basic set of fonts, called internal or resident fonts which can also be updated externally with use of ROM boards in which fonts are stored.

In addition to text, laser printers are very adept at printing graphics. However, you need significant amounts of memory in the printer to print high-resolution graphics. To print a full-page graphic at 300 dpi, for example, you need at least 1 MB (megabyte) of printer RAM. For a 600-dpi graphic, you need at least 4 MB RAM. All laser printers come with a certain amount of RAM memory, and you can usually increase the amount of memory by adding memory boards in the printer's expansion slots. The more RAM a printer has, the more fonts that can be downloaded at one time. They are easy to operate and being non-impact printers, they are much quieter than other printers.

Colour printers work the same way as monochrome printers, except they go through the entire printing process four times - one pass each for cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black. By combining these four colors of toner in varying proportions, you can generate the full spectrum of colour. There are several different ways of doing this. Some models have four toner and developer units on a rotating wheel. The printer lays down the electrostatic image for one color and puts that toner unit into position. It then applies this color to the paper and goes through the process again for the next color. Some printers add all four colors to a plate before placing the image on paper. For the complexities involved, the colour laser printers tend to cost four times more than the regular monochrome ones.

When they were first introduced, laser printers were too expensive to use; however, these printers are now significantly more affordable. For instance, now you can pick up a basic model for just a little bit more than a nice inkjet printer. Toner powder is cheap and lasts a long time, while you can use up expensive ink cartridges very quickly. As technology advances, laser printer prices should continue to drop, while performance improves. So in the long run, a laser printer should definitely give good value for money.