Laser Printer Selection, Use and Maintenance

Buying a laser printer is not as simple as buying a TV. In addition to electronic circuits, mechanical devices, and optical components, laser printers also require the support of consumable materials such as photosensitive drums and toners.

How to choose the most qualified and ideal model among many brands? How to confirm your own needs? What conditions do laser printers have to provide the most perfect function? How much is the price reasonable? These are the current consumption. The most concerned issues when choosing a laser printer.

When a printer chooses a printer, it must first consider the printing speed. If printing Chinese, the difference between the movement speed and the Chinese printing speed should also be considered; secondly, the performance of the printer, such as resolution, image printing speed, Chinese language processing capability, and printer, should be considered. Memory, printer and host interface and so on. There is also an important point that reasonable consumables prices and comprehensive maintenance services, which is the user must pay attention and concern.

(a) print quality

(1) Resolution

The print quality of a laser printer is generally expressed in terms of its resolution (in dpi). At present, the price of laser printers on the domestic market differs greatly due to its resolution, movement speed, and format. Before the purchase, the user must first consider the nature of the work actually performed using the laser printer to select an appropriate resolution. For example, laser printers are only used for various types of office documents, charts, reports, contracts, and general printed samples. 300DPI is sufficient.

(2) Chinese character print quality

The print quality of Chinese characters in laser printers is an important indicator, mainly referring to whether the output of Chinese characters is beautiful, whether the size, shadow, and other changes are rich.

The realization of the Chinese character printing function of the laser printer mainly includes two ways: character mode and graphic mode. If the software on the host transmits the print file contents to the printer in the form of character codes and print commands, the internal hard word library of the printer is used, and the Chinese characters, fonts, and various changes that are output at this time are loaded by the printer's internal font and corresponding processing. The procedure is decided. Since Western-style laser printers have a variety of Western-style fonts installed in their interiors, they have adopted this method when printing Western languages. They are characterized by fast print speeds and high quality.

At present, most types of typesetting software on the mainland use graphic methods for Chinese character printing. That is, the host typesetting software first forms the print contents into image files, and then sends them to the printer to print them out graphically. The quality of Chinese characters output by this method is completely determined by the software and has nothing to do with the printer.

Generally, a good laser printer should be able to print text, regardless of the font size, it is all clear and legible. When printing graphics, it must also be able to output a grayscale change within a range. Vertical and horizontal lines must be transferred. Make it as smooth as possible.

(b) Print speed

The main factors affecting the printing speed are: host CPU performance, application software and printer driver, data transmission method, printer language, printer controller, printer motor speed, and use environment.

In principle, the output speed of a laser printer depends on the motor it uses. The quality of the motor determines the output speed, resolution, and toner consumption of the laser printer. At present, the output speed of a general desktop laser printer is about 4 to 8 pages/minute.

Many users mistakenly believe that the printer's motor speed is equal to the actual speed of the print file, which means that all 8 pages/minute laser printers have the same print speed, and 8 pages/minute printer must be faster than 6 pages/minute. printer. In fact, the printer's print speed varies depending on the software and hardware involved in the printing process. The motor speed can only represent the speed of the printer's empty paper. This speed can only be similar when the same content is printed repeatedly or printed in English.

In the process of Chinese character laser printout, it is generally required to go through several steps such as software processing, character or font lattice transmission, printer receiving processing, and printing. At present, the Western-style laser printers in foreign countries are designed for Western languages ​​because of their print processing mechanism. The Chinese character application software can only output and print in image mode. The general parallel port data transmission speed is 20KB/s, and it takes about 30 seconds to print a page of content in the graphic mode. At the same time, the processing speed of the typesetting software and the receiving and processing speeds of the printer and the movement speed are considered, even if it is 8 pages/minute. Western-style laser printers do not print more than one page per minute for Chinese characters, and generally print one page every two to three minutes.

If the laser printer is used for the network, then it must have a high-speed character transmission and an internal hard font kanji printer. The printer in the network will print a large number of files. Each user must compete for printers with other users. The long waiting time and low printing efficiency are unbearable.

Laser printers use software driven methods that are too slow and versatile, so Chinese character printing technology tends to be hardware accelerated. The hardware acceleration mainly includes several methods of Chinese character font box, video card, print port expansion card and Chinese character laser print controller.

(1) Chinese character font box

The Chinese font box method is to use the font interface provided by the Western-style laser machine, insert the Chinese character library box, use the internal control mechanism of the laser printer to take out the character model, and put it on the designated position in a page. It is characterized by faster speed and simple hardware. However, since the laser printer's font interface is for Western languages, the width of Chinese and Western characters is not the same. This requires software control adjustments. Therefore, the laser printer adopting this method cannot become a general-purpose Chinese character laser printer. At the same time, because its control mechanism is inside the laser printer, this method restricts the Chinese characters to use only dot matrix fonts. Therefore, it is difficult to achieve stepless scaling and printing requirements for multiple fonts, even if the cost is difficult to accept. Therefore, the Chinese character pattern mode is a relatively simple hardware acceleration mode. The output font size is limited to the font size stored in the font library. It is not possible to freely change fonts, font sizes, and formats according to the instructions of the typesetting software. Chongqing Huasheng Group's HS-L8B Chinese character laser printer is such a model.

(2) Video card method

Video card mode is to insert the video card into the host PC. Its role is to control the opening and closing of the laser beam. The card has a page buffer memory. Each bit in the buffer corresponds to a point on the printed page. Chinese characters are processed. After it becomes a dot matrix, it is placed at a designated position in the page buffer. When the entire page is processed, a paper feed command is issued to the printer. In the paper-feeding process, each bit in the page buffer is synchronously transferred to the video port. Since each point on the page can be controlled, a variety of printing effects can be achieved.

The disadvantage is that this kind of processing method shares the CPU with the host, which takes up a large amount of memory space, and the application software seizes the system resources, the price is also more expensive, and the host Chinese character system and the application software must be required to support the video port mode while using the Chinese character system. The software font itself, so that its output accuracy and speed will be affected, compared to the font box mode, the use of video cards to achieve Chinese characters printed on hardware and software are complex. Beijia company's Beijiao laser printer is this mode, and Beijia laser printer simulation system must be used as a universal printing peripheral device.

(3) Print port expansion card mode

The printing port expansion method is to insert a printing card into the expansion slot of the laser printer. The card has a large-capacity RAM or ROM for storing fonts, programs, and page buffers. When the ROM font is used, the printer does not need to load the font from the host. In the RAM font library, programs and fonts can be loaded into the card from the PC at a time after power-on. The advantage is that the user can select the fonts for printing. In this way, general software can print out Chinese characters as long as they can send the Chinese character code to the printer, without affecting the printer's original Western print function. The disadvantage is that buyers spend a sum of money on Western-style printers and the total investment is more. Many imported Western-style laser printers now use this method to print Chinese characters.

(4) Chinese character laser printer controller

According to the characteristics of the Chinese character environment, various resources (such as fonts, etc.) and technologies needed for Chinese character printing are combined with Western-style printing technology to develop Chinese and Western laser printer controllers and standard laser printers that comply with Chinese information processing methods. The cores are combined to form a Chinese-western laser printer, that is, a Chinese character laser printer.

In order to approach the print speeds of 4 pages/minutes and 8 pages/minutes in Western languages, Chinese must adopt the same character transmission and hard-word printing methods as in Western languages, ie, “Chinese and Western laser printers” in the form of print controllers.

The Chinese character laser printing control method not only greatly improves the printing speed of the Chinese characters in terms of performance, but also does not rely on the environment in use, and has a qualitative leap in compatibility, and can enable manufacturers to utilize their respective technical advantages to develop and produce high performance. Price ratio products.

(III) Others

In addition to the hardware operation, expansion, and maintenance work, the collocation of software is also very important. It is very important that the printer is compatible with the most commonly used software.

Since laser printers are high-end devices, the amount of laser printers used by each host in the daily work is not too high. So whether the printer has more than one parallel port is very important. One of the most common problems with laser printers is damage to the printer's interface caused by the frequent insertion and removal of transmission cables. Realizing the sharing of a laser printer by multiple hosts can reduce such failures and improve the efficiency of laser printers.

In addition, whether the selected laser printer can simulate other traditional forms of printers, whether the manufacturer provides good technical support, and whether the supply of consumables is insured, should also attract sufficient attention during the purchase.

Laser printers use

After the laser printer is unpacked, open the upper cover and remove the plastic fixing clips inside the printer (the color of the plastic fixing clip is different from the color of the printer). Place the laser printer on the workpiece table.

The room temperature should be controlled at about 22°C, and the relative temperature should be 20% to 80%; and direct sunlight and the erosion of chemicals should be avoided. The laser printer power supply voltage must not exceed 10% of the number on the printer's nameplate.

Laser printer work process is different from ordinary stylus printer, it does not have the function of percussion. It uses the photoelectric principle to melt the toner into the paper, so the laser printer cannot print wax paper. Good quality copy paper and adhesive paper, envelopes, labels, and projection transparencies can all be used as laser printer paper. The laser printer paper must be dry and free of static electricity, otherwise the easy-to-paper or printer files will be black. Paper should be stored at a temperature of 17°C to 23°C and a relative humidity of 40% to 50% in order to get the best print results.

If any paper jam is found during the printing process, open the cover of the printer, pull out the paper jammed in the printer, and close the printer cover. The fault can be eliminated. If you have frequent problems, use a dry cloth to clean the printer's corona wire and paper path.

The correct procedure for laser printers

1. Turn on the computer and printer. Make the printer ON-LINE, that is, ON-LINE green light.

2. Issue a print command on the computer.

3. When there is less content on the last page, the printer can be placed in the OFF-LINE state. Press the FORMFEED button to print the last page.

4. Press the ON-LINE button again to return the printer to the ON-LINE state to receive more information.

Laser printer maintenance

The laser printer presses the order issued by the computer to absorb the charged toner on the photosensitive drum through photoelectric effect, and then prints it on the printing paper from the photosensitive drum to heat the toner so that the toner dissolves into the paper fiber to complete the printing function. Therefore, the photoreceptor drum plays an important role in the entire laser printing process. The value of a photoconductor drum is generally about one thousand yuan, so the maintenance of the photoconductor drum is also more important.

Photosensitive drums should be maintained at a relative humidity of 20 to 80% during operation, at a temperature of 10 to 32.5°C, to avoid direct sunlight, and to be as constant as possible. The photoconductive drum is valid for two and a half years without unsealing, and is valid for six months after unpacking. The drum cartridge is printed with a valid period and must be used within the validity period.

Photosensitive drum can not be placed under direct sunlight after being taken out of the aluminum bag, nor can it be placed in room lighting for more than ten minutes, otherwise it will affect the printing effect.

Sometimes during the printing process, a message will be displayed on the LCD screen of the printer, indicating that the toner in the photosensitive drum will run out. You must add or replace the photosensitive drum immediately. Otherwise, the printed document will be faded and the document will change. There will be white bars. After the print file is completed, the remaining toner on the drum is removed with a cleaning brush to ensure the quality of the next page.

If the print toner accidentally touches the clothes, it can be taken off with a dry cloth, and then the clothes can be washed in cold water and cannot be placed in hot water, otherwise the ink will remain on the fabric forever.

Laser printers produce ozone during the printing process. Each time you print 50,000 sheets, you must replace the ozone filter (you can see how many sheets the machine has printed by self-testing the laser printer), although the ozone filter looks very clean at this time. , but it can no longer filter ozone.

When the laser printer is placed in a crowded environment, the ventilation of the room is not good, the exhaust port of the printer is facing the operator's face, and the ozone filter is used for too long, the ozone generated by the printer during the printing process will be harmful to the human body. At this time, it is necessary to improve the working environment of the printer and replace the ozone filter in time.

Usually use dry cloth to remove paper dust and dust from the laser printer and clean the corona wire. Only in this way can the normal use of the laser printer be ensured and its lifespan extended.