Laser writer

Milliwatts, but the fuser uses a heater (often a halogen tube) that chews hundreds of watts while it's on.

There is no such thing.

Laser printers use low-power devices - nothing fancy, no heat sinks. The real power in laser printers is in the Optical PhotoConductor which is charged with a uniform, high voltage static charge which - when exposed to light - discharges to ground leaving spots for toner to transfer or not to transfer. The LED heads are similarly weak devices.

I was wrong - though LED printers work differently - no spinning mirror.

Althought they have a output power too ;)

I heard there are lasers that use a horisontal lcd array to print,..?

Hello John,

The fuser is the real power hog in them. My previous laser was on 240V so I didn't notice. The one I bought on Monday runs off 120V and every time the fuser turns on my desk lamp dims a little. Annoying but I'll get used to that. Luckily I can set the fall-back to sleep mode to 5mins so it'll quit doing that shortly after a print job.

Regards, Joerg

The

is

exposed to

not to

5mins

I just picked up a LaserJet 1320 for $300 to replace my 15 year old IIIP that still works ok, it's just way too slow (4ppm). The 1320 uses something called "instant on technology" or something like that. This is their fancy name for "the fuser gets hot really, really fast". It cools completely down when you aren't printing, so there's no heat, noise or dimming house lights until you actually print. First page out from cold start in 8 seconds, not too shabby considering that 3 of those seconds is the fused paper actually coming out. The clincher for me was the built in duplexer. The roaring fans running for three minutes after printing one page really sux, but I'll learn to live with it. ;-)

BTW, by chance I also picked up some "Navigator"

24lb "inkjet" paper that rates a 96 on whiteness. It's absolutely beautiful, it's like the paper in a quality text book. It's evenly opaque, no splotchyness at all and two sided print doesn't show thru. The funny thing is that it was one of the cheapest papers that the store had at something like $4/ream. I can't wait to try some of their "laser" paper. ;-)

No affiliation, yada yada YMMV etc......

I went the IIP -> 6L -> 1320 route.

I love my 1320. Fans? I guess I'm to deaf to notice ;-)

I have something similar in paper from OfficeMax... I like nice heavy paper.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I think I saw somewhere that the laser output was around 1/10 milliwatt IR. It would not be good for much else if that was what you were asking..

Make that 5mW (@785nm (=IR)). (at least for the LaserJet II/III) That's 10x the output of a simple CD player (also IR).

But still:

A decent DVD burner on the other hand, has a nice 20mW 635nm (deep red) laser. But stripping a *working* DVD burner (the most common burner faillure = defective laser unit!) for what's essentially a light-toy, seems a bit too wasteful to me. I'd use some savings to buy some serious laser stuff on an auction :-P

IIIP

So you're prone to frivolous upgrades then? (;-) I'll be interested to see if this 1320 will still be printing in 10 years, somehow I kinda doubt that it will.

This

out

those

was

after

Now see, I've read reports from both sides. Some people swear they are mouse quiet, but others must be hearing what I'm hearing. Mine's pretty loud IMO, maybe I should open it up and see what kind of fans it uses.

store

I really like this Navigator stuff. It's curls a bit when it's first printed, but it just kinda relaxes when it cools off and flattens itself right out. Maybe their "laser" paper doesn't do that?

A friend of mine has a friend working at O.M. that tips him off on all the clearance sales. He bought a bunch of paper from them a few years back. It rang up at 3 cents/ream.

What class would that laser be in? That much power would burn your skin also. I have a 5 mw red laser from an old laser type setter. Nice big sealed Helium Neon tube.

They seem to be up to 180 mW now... though the optics let out only a fraction.http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/acrobat/literature/9397/75012276.pdf

That's 8x speed recording. Higher speed means even higher power, and dual layer is higher power for a given speed as well.

I suppose this power is peak - duty cycle is a fairly constant 50% AFAIK.

The drivers could be interesting as well... 16 speed is 21600 KB/sec which boils down to more than 200 MHz on the laser.

The cost of a recorder is low - what could one make from it?

Thomas