Apart from being used for commercial printing and photocopying, laser technology has now made headway into business and even personal printing, not just in monochrome but in colour too! The dynamic world of laser printers is driven not only by developments in laser technology, but that in embedded systems, wireless communications, software technologies and more!

There have been very few disruptive innovations in the core technology of laser printing over the past few years. Laser printers still work using a printer command language that converts the language of 1s and 0s into the language of shades and pixels, which printers can understand and execute with toner, drum, mirrors, lenses, photoreceptors, thermal fusion and, of course, lasers. In short, nothing much has changed with regard to the basics. Yet, it is interesting to note that advancements in laser printing have come about thanks to developments in many allied fields, ranging from optics and wireless communications to embedded systems and software development.

Let’s take a look at some of the advancements in laser printing and the related technologies that have shaped today’s cutting-edge printers, and those that promise to revolutionise tomorrow’s.

Laser printers go organic

We have heard about display technology turning in favour of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs). OLED technology is generally found to be better than LCDs as OLEDs are brighter, do not require any backlighting, and can lead to sharper images in smaller screens. For the same reasons, Epson tried creating a printer head that used OLEDs as the light source rather than lasers or standard LEDs, and in March this year, the company succeeded. OLED printer heads can produce sharper images as the light beam can be controlled better. OLED technology will, over time, lead to sharper print quality, less parallax errors, faster printing, and smaller print heads that last longer (since OLEDs have a longer life than conventional LEDs).

But then, if OLEDs are used instead of lasers, will laser printers still be called laser printers?

The heart of the matter

At the heart of every laser printer is an application-specific integrated circuit that handles tasks ranging from networking, compression and font rendering, to communications (now wireless). Everything from the print-quality to the speed of printers depends on this embedded system.

The role of the embedded system in laser printers is becoming all the more important, because the role of information and communication technology in printers is becoming as predominant as its mechanical components. Printers today need to be able to plug into existing networks. They need to provide a certain level of security at the device level itself. They are an indispensable part of document management systems. They need to support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other communication technologies so that users can connect their PDAs, phones and cameras wirelessly and print. All these requirements mean that the embedded systems in printers need to be very capable. And they are becoming so.

Samsung, for one, clearly pegs the strength of its embedded chip as a USP for its line of printers. The printer is ‘run’ by an all-in-one Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)—an embedded system that includes hardware and software components for everything from toning and communications to font rendering. It includes the Samsung Resolution Technology (SRT) chip, a hardware accelerator for half-toning. This chip helps achieve finer, smoother images. Epson too positions its ASIC technology as a differentiating element.

Probing deeper, these ASICs in turn are powered by innovations and developments in hardware and software components that get designed into them. The font engine, for example, is an important element of the ASICs in printers, and these have improved in terms of compression and decompression algorithms, better cache management systems, etc.

But why rely only on the little processor inside the printer? Canon, for its part, uses a proprietary technology called Canon Advanced Printing Technology in its laser printers. This works by utilising a PC’s powerful processor and memory, thus reducing the amount of printer memory required and speeding up data processing.