Laser printer in the context of "Photoconductor"

Risograph is a brand of digital duplicators manufactured by the Riso Kagaku Corporation. Released in Japan in 1980, it is designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing. It is sometimes called a printer-duplicator as newer models can be used as a network printer as well as a stand-alone duplicator. When printing or copying many duplicates (generally more than 100) of the same content, it is typically far less expensive per page than a conventional photocopier, laser printer, or inkjet printer.

The HP LaserJet 5 is a group of monochrome laser printers produced in the mid-1990s as part of the LaserJet series by Hewlett-Packard (HP). It is the successor to the HP LaserJet 4 series of printers. After the LaserJet 5 series, however, HP introduced a new naming convention for its LaserJet line. While the LaserJet 5L and 5P were replaced with the LaserJet 6L and 6P, there was never a LaserJet 6; the successor to the LaserJet 5/5M/5N/5se line was the LaserJet 4000 series, and the successor to the LaserJet 5si/5siMX/5siNX was the LaserJet 8000 series. In addition, the LaserJet 4V/4MV was not succeeded by a LaserJet 5 series printer, as its successor was the LaserJet 5000 series.

Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document-reproduction technology. They have now been replaced by digital duplicators, scanners, laser printers, and photocopiers, but for many years they were the primary means of reproducing documents for limited-run distribution. The duplicator was pioneered by Thomas Edison and David Gestetner, with Gestetner dominating the market up until the late 1990s.

Like the typewriter, these machines were products of the second phase of the Industrial Revolution which started near the end of the 19th century (also called the Second Industrial Revolution). This second phase brought to mass markets technologies like the small electric motors and the products of industrial chemistry without which the duplicating machines would not have been economical. By bringing greatly increased quantities of paperwork to daily life, the duplicating machine and the typewriter gradually changed the forms of the office desk and transformed the nature of office work.

Toner is a powder mixture used in laser printers and photocopiers to form the text and images on paper, in general through a toner cartridge. Mostly granulated plastic, early mixtures added only carbon powder and iron oxide; now there are mixtures that contain polypropylene, fumed silica, and various minerals for triboelectrification. Toner using plant-derived plastic also exists as an alternative to petroleum plastic. Toner particles are melted by the heat of the fuser, and are thus bonded to the paper.

In earlier photocopiers, this low-cost carbon toner was poured by the user from a bottle into a reservoir in the machine. Later copiers, and laser printers from the first 1984 Hewlett-Packard LaserJet, feed directly from a sealed toner cartridge.

A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting plotter.

In the past, plotters were used in applications such as computer-aided design, as they were able to produce line drawings much faster and of a higher quality than contemporary conventional printers. Smaller desktop plotters were often used for business graphics. Printers with graphics capabilities took away some of the market by the early 1980s, and the introduction of laser printers in the mid-1980s largely eliminated the use of plotters from most roles.

Laser scanning is governed by the LiDAR technology and is defined as the controlled deflection of laser beams, visible or invisible. Scanned laser beams are used in some 3-D printers, in rapid prototyping, in machines for material processing, in laser engraving machines, in ophthalmological laser systems for the treatment of presbyopia, in confocal microscopy, in laser printers, in laser shows, in Laser TV, and in barcode scanners.Applications specific to mapping and 3D object reconstruction are known as 3D laser scanner.