Tips to Maintaining Your Printer by Yourself

Tips to Maintaining Your Printer by Yourself

It is easy to forget about your printer as you go about your computing needs. It sits there on your right hand side and springs to life when needed. Or at least it is supposed to. If you do not take a minute or two, a couple of time per week, you may find some interesting words coming out of your mouth when streaks or paper jams occur.

Keep it clean

This is easily said and done. The printer heads are the biggie in this area. Printer heads are definitely prone to clogging. If they are not used on a regular basis, or if they are used at a quick clip, they will clog. Every now and again take out the printer cartridges and give a quick clean with a non-linting cloth or moistened Q-tip. If you do use your printer quite a bit think about all those pieces of paper rolling through the printer. It is unlikely that each and every piece of paper will roll through without a shard or tear coming off the paper. These shards will attach themselves to the rollers or other inconvenient printer elements. It is wise to open up the printer every now and again and give it a quick wipe down with a moistened Q-tip.

Turn off and cover

It may seem like many of these tips involve the printer heads, and they do. The printer heads are the area where most preventable maintenance issues occur. Most people, me included, are prone to turning off the computer but not the printer. This leaves the printer heads exposed to the air and possibly drying out. At the ends of the day turn off the printer at the printer. Not from the power cord but at the printer. This will cover the printer heads. Particularly if you are in a dusty region, or if you have a pet, cover you printer. Dust and hair are killers for a printer.

Use the printer

One of the biggest ways to take care of your printer is to use it. Many people really do not use the printer all that much, myself included. This is a digital age and everything tends to stay on the computer. At least twice a week print something that will use all the printers' workings. A colorful website will do but give it a bit of a workout and most of the other maintenance issues will never arise.

by James Kara Murat
Keyword : Tips to Maintaining Your Printer by Yourself

How do Laser Printers Work?

How do Laser Printers Work?

It is one of those things that most of us really don't think about. How does a laser printer work? Well, you click "print" and it works, right? For most of us that is all we need to know or would care to know. But, in reality, it is something you should an understanding of if you are going to be buying a laser printer for the office network or shelling out a decent amount of cash.

Chemistry isn't that bad

Most people have horror stories about chemistry class, me included. But when it comes to figuring out how a laser printer and chemistry work together it is not all that bad. Whether it is a HP, Epson, Cannon or Dell laser printer it works the same way, positive charges and negative charges. The old saying actually applies, opposites attract.

Getting charged

Within the laser printer there is a drum that slowly turns. As it turns it is given a charge by a wire (charge corona wire) or, in some cases, another roller. After the drum is charged the printer shoots a laser at the surface of the drum discharging the drum in certain places. These places end up looking like letters and numbers on the drum.

To get these discharged letters and number shapes off the drum and onto a piece of paper the laser printer covers the discharged shapes with charged toner. It then hooks them up with an oppositely charged piece of paper. As makes sense the toner is attracted to the paper and there it is, toner on paper. If you have ever changed a toner cartridge you can attest that the stuff loves to attach itself to just about anything. The process so far just makes the toner attach itself in an ordered fashion or letter and numbers.

Getting toned

The process is just about complete at the most basic level. What needs to happen to finish off the process is for the toner to be fused into the paper permanently. To accomplish this the laser printer rolls the paper by a heat roller to melt the toner into the fibers of the paper. As the laser printer does this it real eases the charge with yet another roller.

Ultimately, when the process is in synch there is no muss and no mess. But everything needs to be timed just right. In the end, there is a warm static free piece of paper with all the words fit and unfit to print.

by James Kara Murat
Keyword : How do Laser Printers Work?