How a Personal Photocopier Works

A photocopier is without a doubt one of the most important pieces of office equipment for any business big or small. Unfortunately, the upkeep and cost of a fully sized multifunctional copier can put them out of reach for many smaller businesses. Luckily, the office-supply market has recently seen the introduction of affordable, personal-sized copiers. One of the best features of these personal copiers is their compact and lightweight frames which gives them the ability to be easily moved from one location to the next. Most personal copiers come equipped with an easy to grab handle so that a business owner or employee can easily move the copier from the office to a meeting or even back to their home. The beauty of these machines is that you can literally take them anywhere you would need to make a copy.

Drum and Toner

The personal copier condenses many of the features of a full-sized copier into a smaller more portable package. Within all copiers are two very important components: the drum and the ink toner. The drum is responsible for creating the image that is being copied while the ink toner is the medium via which the image is transferred to paper. When the copier's intense bright white light hits the paper that is being copied, the light is reflected off the white areas of the page while the rest strikes the drum below the paper. The areas where light hits the drum have their positively charged atoms neutralized while the areas that are blocked by the image on the drum keep their positive atoms. The toner is then attracted to the areas where positive charges are still intact while the areas where the neutralized atoms are present do not attract any toner.

The Printing Process

After the image has been embedded into the drum and the copy is ready to be made, the paper is heated very quickly. The heat applied causes the paper to have a stronger more positive charge than that which exists on the drum. This causes the toner to be attracted to the paper in the exact same pattern that has already been "etched" on the drum thus making a replica of the original image onto the paper. The heat basically causes the toner to fuse and stick to the paper much in the same way your hair is attracted towards a static balloon.

Although personal copiers work in much the same way as a traditional copiers, they are often limited in their printing capabilities. Most personal copiers can only copy about four pages per minute and are limited to only copying documents letter-sized or smaller. Other features like automatic stapling, collating, and dual-sided copies are also common features usually not found in personal copiers.