LED printer

An LED printer is a type of computer printer. LED technology uses a light-emitting diode array as a light source in the printhead. The LED bar pulse-flashes across the entire page width and creates the image on the print drum or belt as it moves past.

LEDs are more efficient and reliable than conventional laser printers, since they have fewer moving parts. Depending on design, LED printers can have faster rates of print than some laser-based designs, and are generally cheaper to manufacture. 

Laser systems rely on elaborate combinations of rotating mirrors and lenses that must remain in alignment throughout their use.


The laser scans from one end of a line to another, then starts on the next line. Unlike laser printers, an LED printhead has no moving parts. Although used differently, a similar principle was used in Nintendo's Virtual Boy.

LED printing was invented by Casio.

The C3000 Series, C5000 Series and C9000 Series from OKI Printing Solutions are Digital LED Colour printers. With their fixed arrays of light emitting diodes (LEDs) and precision lenses, they have fewer moving parts, less complexity, and an intuitively more efficient printing method than laser, inkjet and solid ink.

In the Single Pass Colour process, the paper medium follows a streamlined path, passing beneath four in-line printheads – one each for cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) – the fuser, and out to the user. Simple, effective and fast.

Colour laser technology, on the other hand, requires four passes – not one – to process a 4-color image. Only when the fourth pass is completed will all of the toner be fused to the paper. More time is expended while the laser-produced image is completed, transferred and fused.

Single Pass Color Digital Technology puts colour on the paper with exacting accuracy – up to true 1200 x 1200 dpi output – for breathtaking reproduction and presentation-quality documents in less time than ordinary technologies and for less overall cost.

Digital LED and Laser printers are both examples of electrophotographic technology.

LED (Light Emitting Diode) printheads uses a single, pixel-size, modulating light source to recreate images. This beam emanates from a stationary array containing thousands of LEDs. Light from each diode passes through a focusing lens onto an image drum that serves as a pohotreceptor. Toner is attracted to this latent image and transferred to the paper. (Figure 1)


Laser printheads also use a single light source. However, this beam is aimed at a revolving mirror that reflects it through a series of focusing lenses and off a mirror to an image drum. Toner is attracted to this latent image and transferred to the paper. Lasers produce the same results as Digital LEDs. (Figure 2)

Toner-based printers from OKI Printing Solutions employ both Digital LED and Laser Technology.

PCL & PostScript printing explained

PCL Driver and PostScript Driver - what's the difference?

Understanding your printer

PCL and PostScript are both essentially languages used by your printer in order to convert data into a finished print job. Each language has its advantages and disadvantages - PCL is best for everyday, text-based office documents, while PS is more suited to large PDF or other image-heavy documents.

PCL

Printer Control Language or PCL, is a widely used printing language, supported by many different Operating systems (e.g. Windows). This enables the same printer to work in many different environments. PCL is device dependent, which means that its drivers use the printer hardware for creating some of the printed data (usually graphics data like fill areas and fonts). Because the printer completes the creation and processing of page data, your computer processes the print job more quickly and efficiently. However, individual printers may perform these tasks differently, giving you a slightly different output.

Advantages

• Fast print processing.
• Widely supported in many different Operating Systems

Disadvantages

• The same print job may vary slightly from printer to printer
• Quality of graphics dependent on the print device
• Not supported in most Macintosh environments. For everyday office documents we recommend using the PCL driver.

PostScript

PostScript language or PS is also a common printing language and is used heavily in Macintosh platforms, as well as for graphic applications in other platforms. Unlike PCL, PostScript is device independent, which means that the Postscript language creates all of the print data and does not rely on the printer for print data. This ensures consistent output, even when printed on more than one type of printer. Graphic objects will be consistent and, in some cases, of higher quality than PCL.

Advantages

Graphic objects are often more detailed

The same print file should print identically on all print devices

Disadvantages

Print processing can be slow

Not found in as many platforms as PCL

Print file and memory requirements are larger. Oki recommend using the PostScript driver when printing PDF documents and when printing from graphic applications like Illustrator, Photoshop or Quark. All trademarks acknowledged.


Refer:

okindo