subject: Printer Toner: Origin Of The Color Powder [print this page] If you compare a printer to a body, toner cartridge would probably be the heart of this mechanical organism. This heart supplies the printer with an essential substance - toner powder. Just like blood required for a living organism to exist and act, toner is required for printing devices to perform their role in the world -- create impressions.
In a wider sense, toner is not only blood for printers, it plays an important role in the life of human beings. You can't imagine a business office without a printer, or copier of fax in it. And, despite the ongoing development of electronic documentation, the number of hard copies, whether it's text document, graphics or color images, is growing every year.
So did you ever happen to wonder what this powder, which a professional life is virtually impossible without, is and how it is made?
Resins, plastic, waxes and other additional chemical reagents are mixed together and then ground into powder to make toner. Originally, the toner has been made by mixing or hot compounding. The components lump up while melted to make a substance that resembles paste. After that this substance is cooled, and there are several ways of doing so.
Next, clumps of toner are sprayed into tiny bits. After that, those differently sized bits particles are sorted particles and then blended with special additives for elevate the properties of toner. This widespread way of making toner powder enables producing toner particles, as tiny as 8 microns, 1/3 width of human hair.
The size of particles is related to the printing resolution. 8 micron particles make 600 dots per inch, while 12 microns particles only provide 300 dots on inch.
So, the traditional way of making toner is grinding. What is the modern way?
The chemistry changed the approach of toner production. This new way of toner manufacture is to grow toner provides from molecules in emulsion.
Started in 1990s, chemical toner manufacture has become widely used. Nevertheless, standard toner is still used the most, if compared to chemical toner.
The chemical way of manufacture is cheaper, and since there's tighter control over process of manufacture, particles have much more even shape and size, unlike those of the standard toner.
The round, smooth surface of particles help them flow better in the powder state. Moreover, such particles hold a more uniform electrostatic charge in the laser printer, which significantly affect the printing quality.
The new way to manufacture toner is more favorable: the size of particles can archive 4 micron. This is a whole half as much as particles that can be made by means of usual pulverizing.
It's curious that the size of particles of a toner determine the cartridge resource: the finer particle, the higher resource. With 4 microns particles, only 60% of regular amount of toner is required to print a page.
It takes 40% of less energy to manufacture chemical toner, and carbon footprint is a lot smaller, too. Chemical toner is also power-saving when used in printer, as the fuser heats and fixes toner at lower temperature. This quickens the whole printing process and especially the first page out time.
