By: David H.
Submitted: 2009-10-13 10:07:30 | Word Count: 646
Laser toner is the newest invention to modern printing. The two common types of laser toners are dry and liquid toners.
Laser toner is one of the most important components of a laser printer. It is referred to as the ink for laser printers. This toner can be in powder or liquid form packed into a toner cartridge. The cartridge is responsible for holding and controlling the ink or the toner. It is made up of hard plastic. It is inserted into a cartridge rack inside the laser printer, ready to print several pages.
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Types of Laser Toner
There are two general types. The dry toner is typically used for home or company printers. It is created from a plastic powder, an amalgamation of styrene and acrylic substances. It produces different colors through the help of the added pigments. The carriers help the toner bits to be charged and be attracted into the printed material.
There are advantages in using a dry toner. It produces more materials because it does not need to penetrate the paper fiber. It means less amount of toner is used to print a page. It prints faster and there’s no need for drying time. Furthermore, there is no risk of accidentally staining the printouts. Dry toner is also better for the environment. It has no harmful solvents. Dry toner has more stable colors, as well.
The other type of laser toner is the liquid toner. It is mainly of pigmented acrylic resin elements. The dye or the pigmentation enables the liquid toner to form colors. The resin particles are placed into a protecting liquid. The advantages of using liquid toner are as follows: The printer doesn’t need to warm up when printing. The printed texts/images are hard to fade. It is because the printed texts/images are much more attached to the paper.
How Laser Toner Works
How does the printer use the laser toner to print texts or images? The powder is stored into a toner hopper located inside a removable casing most often referred to as the cartridge. The printer gathers the toner from the hopper with the developer unit, a small magnetic bids, charged negatively. These are attached to a rotating metal roller.
The metal roller moves the developer through the toner in the hopper. The negatively charged bids collect the positive toner particles. The roller then brushes the bids past the drum assembly. This process is called an electrostatic image, and it produces a stronger negative charge.
The electrostatic image enables the drum to pull the toner particles away. The drum moves over the paper producing an even stronger charge which collects the toner to the paper. The paper is then immediately discharged by the detac corona wire. To keep the toner on the page, the page passes through a fuser. An internal device then heats the fuser roller. This is called internal quartz tube lamps. This process melts the plastic in the toner as the page passes through.
Toners must be customized separately based on the printer brand it is meant for. There are toners which need to be grinded in order to become powder. Also, there are features that need to be considered in buying a toner. These include flow rate, melting point, and thermal and magnetic qualities.
Toner Refill Kits
Toner refills are commonly offered as kits which comprise of all pieces necessary to replenish an empty toner cartridge. Toner refill kits have step by step instructions as well as are easy and fast to operate. Refilling a drain cartridge using the bottled toner that comes with the kit only takes minutes.
Refill kits are also the cheapest alternative for buying a new toner. They can save you dollars as compared to getting new cartridges. And since it is universal, it can always be used whenever you get a new printer.
