align="justify">What is an LED printer? LED printer was firstly invented by the Okidata co. in Japan and has been put into use for a period of time. Currently, it is developed and manufactured mostly by Japanese companies. The cost of LED printer is lower than laser printer, which scans the information onto the rotating drum through light with high energy and fixed wave band.
Okidata co. uses an array of infrared LEDs as light source. It directly shines light on a light sensitive drum, transferring the digital information into light information. At that time, the resolution of LED printer cannot compete with the laser printer. But it is less heavy and cheaper than laser printer because the laser printer contains focusing lenses, refraction lenses and other components.
The innovations of printer
Generally, we will consider the price of the printer, the speed of it and the cost of printing when we buy a printer. As to laser printers, although the cost of printing is low, the printer itself is expensive and the size is large. Meanwhile, the printing material, the output product quality needs to be improved. And the printers need to be diversified due to various kinds of requirements. The ink-jet printers bare the following advantages: low price for the machine, high output quality, diversiform of usable printing materials, such as closes or fabric fibers. However, the printing speed is low and the cost is high. Dot-matrix printer is the most traditional printing machines. It is currently used in printing commercial report forms, invoices, and used in cash registers. In short period of time, this kind of printer still has its established market.
So, innovations in the printer industry are expected. Although LED printer is a new application with short time of development, it is now gradually gaining people’s attention.
The LED array printing technique is mature in commercial uses. Although the manufacturing patent is held by a minority of companies, it is not difficult to develop the technique or to search for cooperation with Japanese companies because this technique is simpler than that of laser printers. So it is now a new developing direction for Taiwan manufacturers who is adept at mass production.
The printing principle of the LED printer
The printing principle of a LED printer is similar to that of a laser printer. Both of these two kinds of printers adopt optical techniques to transform the digital information into light information. With the help of carbon powder, the information to be printed is showed in the light sensitive drum, so that fine documents can be printed out. However, the LED printer is superior to the laser printer in its structure. The LED printer is smaller than laser printer in its size for it adopts simple LED array, eliminating some complicated optical components used in the laser printer. Meanwhile, the printing speed for LED printer is higher than that of laser printer or ink-jet printer: the warming-up time for the machine is shorter; the processing speed for the paper is quicker; and the reaction time for the perspective adjusts is shorter too. The LED printer also bares the advantages of low distortion rate and high precision.
The advantages of the LED printer
Apart from the high speed of LED printer mentioned in the former paragraph, LED bare other advantages. LED printer is smaller in size, so it can be produced into multi-functional commercially used machine. Take the products of Casio for example; the way to enter the paper is various, differing from the laser printer, which has to depend on rotating drum to enter the paper. The LED printer can enter the paper flatly like the ink-jet printer. So the printing materials used can be diversified.
Compared with the complicated structure and the high cost of the laser printer, the LED printer also has the following advantages:
The printhead is smaller.
Thanks to the outstanding semiconductor processing techniques and the excellent characteristics of LED, the LED printer has high printing precision and durability.
The life-span is longer than laser printer.
The power consumption is lower.
The LED printer need less heat dissipation component, so the production cost is lower and the noise is lower too.
The disadvantages of the LED printer
A relative obvious defect for LED printer is that if one LED in the array is broken, it is necessary to replace it, like the striking pins in the traditional dot-matrix printer. But thanks to the low cost of the LED printhead, the high yield rate and low cost of replacing the broken LED, this disadvantage has not caused much trouble. The Japanese manufacturers even can provide repairing service for free.
In addition, the improvement of the LED printer’s resolution has its limitation in theory and the manufacturers need to pay more energy to develop its techniques. Currently, the printing quality of LED printer is higher than common laser printers and it is predicted that in the future it will surpass the quality of plane printing. Also, the speed of paper output will go on to be faster. We can expect a bright future for LED printers in business uses.
