How a Laser Printer Works

Cleaning - The Rubber Blade removes any excess toner that drops into the debris cavity. The eraser lamp removes any excess charge off the photosensitive drum. This leaves the drum with a charge of 0 Volts.

Conditioning - The primary cornea (High Voltage Wire) adds a negative charge of around -600 volts to - 1000 volts.

Writing - The laser light hits the photosensitive drum, and dissipates the negative charge to the centre of the drum which is grounded. This leaves sections of the drum with a voltage of -100 volts.

Developing - The drum rolls through a supply of negativly charged toner particles (Particles are -200 Volts to -500 Volts).

Where the drum hasn’t been touched by the laser light, a lower negative charge is still there, so the particles are not attracted to this section of the photosensitive drum.

Transfer - A strong positive charge is applied the the paper, the particles of toner are attracted to the paper.

Fusing - The toner that is on the paper is heated and pressurixed, the toner becomes bonded to the paper.

The Toner Cartridge (or EP-Electro-Photographic) contains the photosensitive drum, Cleaning blade, and primary corona wire. The transfer corona wire is located on the printer itself.


Typical Maintenance kit includes:

Paper pickup rollers

Fuser

Transfer Roller