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Posted by on Jan 29, 2015 in TellMeWhy |

How Does a Photocopier Work?

How Does a Photocopier Work?

Keep reading to find out the answer to your question. How does a photocopier work? What does a photocopier do? Main function of a photocopier is to produce paper copies of a document. Most photocopiers use laser technology. A dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light-sensitive photo receptor to transfer toner on paper to form an image.

A photocopier uses electrostatic charge to produce a copy. Page you want to copy gets placed on a sheet of glass. At the heart of a common plain-paper copier is a plate of selenium.

This is an element which holds an electric charge in the dark, but loses it in the light. First, the plate gets charged with electricity. An image of your document is then focused on the plate.

Wherever the dark parts of the image fall, the plate keeps its charge. The image gets visible by dusting the plate with toner (ink) powder that sticks to the charged image. The image is then transferred to the copy paper.

Paper gets heated to fuse the powder and forms a permanent print. This is what we call fixing the image. When, you use a photocopier you can feel that the copier paper is still warm. Now you know how does a photocopier work.

What is the difference between a photocopier and a printer? Printers are for printing data stored on the computer. Whereas photocopiers are to create a duplicate of the printed material printed by the computer.

Content for this question contributed by Rene Roeller, resident of Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, USA