Everything you need to know about Digital Printing – part 2
Everything you need to know about Digital Printing – part 2 – 3rd July 2009
Electro photography
Dry toner digital printers are used at all levels from desktop personal printers and copiers, to general commercial production print, to high speed reel fed systems used for transactional work, direct mail and books.
The technical term for dry toner processes is usually xerography or electrograph.
Our two decades sweep of history saw the introduction of the first practical full colour digital devices. These laid the foundations of today’s ‘production’ printers as well as the introduction of very affordable desktop ‘multifunction devices’ (MFDs) and networked mid production departmental copier-printers.
Last year (2008), saw the 70th anniversary of the invention of the process by Chester Carlson, a US scientist and patent attorney who was determined to find a simple and clean way to make copies of documents. He called the invention xerography, from the Greek words xeros (dry) and graphics (writing), to distinguish it from the wet chemical mimeograph copying processes that existed at the time. His first xerographic copy let directly to today’s vast photocopier and digital toner printer product lines. It also led to the founding of Xerox, which has been a consistent pioneer and always a major name in the development and commercial supply of copiers and, for the past three decades, has pioneered digital laser printers in particular.
Although ‘xerography’ was intended to be a generic label and can refer to any similar dry toner process, its close association with the Xerox name means that rival manufacturers tend to prefer the term ‘electrophotography’.
Until the 1970s, all such machines were photocopiers that used optical systems to reflect and project the image of the original onto the photosensitive drum, which became statically charged and was able to pick up the toner and subsequently transfer it to paper for fusing. The invention of the laser allowed the imaging process to be controlled from a computer, giving rise to the first digital laser printers. Not all digital dry toner machines are laser printers; other imaging can include LEDs and more rarely, ion beams and magnetic imagers.
To be continued…
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See Part 12 of this blog on Print finishing, See also our Blog on Spot UV Varnishing
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