Comparative analysis of LED imaging technology and laser imaging technology

“The Electronic imaging printers currently in the market can be divided into two categories, one is the laser printers that we are familiar with, and the other is the uncommon LED printers (inkjet printers do not belong to the category of electronic imaging). Like the author at the beginning, many of my friends may not know what an LED printer is. Below, the author will introduce the differences between LED printers and laser printers in detail, as well as their current market environment.

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The electronic imaging printers currently in the market can be divided into two categories, one is the laser printers that we are familiar with, and the other is the uncommon LED printers (inkjet printers do not belong to the category of electronic imaging). Like the author at the beginning, many of my friends may not know what an LED printer is. Below, the author will introduce the differences between LED printers and laser printers in detail, as well as their current market environment.

Comparison of the advantages of LED and laser technology:

In fact, LED printing (Light Emitting Diode) is not a new technology. In the beginning, it was mainly used on black and white printers. LED printers use a set of light-emitting diodes (LEDS) to scan photosensitive imaging, while laser printers use laser technology. This is also the biggest difference between LED printers and laser printers. In addition, the other work of the two The principle is very similar. It is necessary to introduce the LED scanning photosensitive imaging technology here: LED photosensitive imaging uses a dense LED array as the light emitter, converts the electrical signal of the data information into an optical signal and then emits it to the photosensitive drum for imaging. The laser imaging technology transmits all the data signals to a transmitting device, and the emitted light is reflected on the photosensitive drum after being reflected by the rotating polygon mirror. In this way, the imaging process of LED technology is obviously simpler than the laser imaging process, and because of this, LED printing technology is usually faster than laser printing.
　

In fact, it is not only the above-mentioned reasons that affect the printing speed. In addition, the laser head of the laser printer needs to scan and calibrate each line of optical data reaching the photosensitive drum. LED printing uses multi-point light sources, which does not require a cumbersome scanning process, and can maintain high-speed printing at high resolution.

In addition, because the LED technology uses a matrix method to transmit light spots, the resulting printed dots can be made very small, so that not only very fine strokes can be clearly displayed during text printing, but also conducive to grayscale or color transitions . However, during LED printing, each point on the imaging surface corresponds to a light-emitting diode. For example, to image an 8-inch long document surface with 300dpi, 300*8=2400 light-emitting diodes are required to work, so the higher the resolution. The higher the image area, the larger the number of diodes. This is a shortcoming of LED printers: as the printing resolution increases, the dot matrix must be made smaller and more, so the development and production costs will be greatly increased. So at present, the highest resolution of common LED printers is only about 600dpi. The laser printer has reached 2400dpi, and with the increase of the resolution, the cost of the shock technology has not changed much, but the LED printing system has to invest a very high cost. This is also one of the most important factors hindering the development of LED printers.

On the other hand, due to the high heat generation, the life of the laser printer imaging system is difficult to improve to another level. The LED imaging system uses light-emitting diodes, so the life of the light source is longer than that of laser printing. However, it is precisely because of the use of light-emitting diodes that the printing quality or the depth of coloration is not as vivid as laser printing.

It is also worth mentioning that the environmental performance of LED printers is better than that of laser printers. LED can directly generate high-brightness light source under low-voltage conditions, thus saving energy, saving electricity, and producing no ozone is also one of its outstanding advantages. However, when the traditional laser printer is working, high-pressure transmission of images will generate a large amount of ozone and other harmful substances.

LED Printer Brand:

In terms of manufacturers, in addition to OKI being a loyal supporter of LED printers, Fujitsu, jolimark, Casio and Lexmark are also involved in this technical field, but their historical market share of such products is quite low. In addition, in high-end applications, there are Eastman Kodak (mainly 92ppm models), Siemens Nixdorf (mainly printers from 50 to 744ppm), and Xicon (25ppm and above models) and so on. From a long-term perspective, the author is not optimistic about the prospects of LED printers. However, due to the various advantages of LED printers, there are still many such products on the market. For example, OKI recently launched a new LED printer C3200. In addition to maintaining the high printing speed of color 12PPM and black and white 20PPM, the printing resolution It has also been increased to a rare 1200*600dpi. OKI supports LED printers, and strives to compete with the laser printing technologies represented by HP and Epson in the printing market. It really has amazing strength.

Although LED printers are rare in the current market, due to their outstanding advantages and characteristics, they still have a certain market in some specific user fields such as surveying and mapping, printing, and copiers.

Compared with the previous generation product C5100, the OKI C5200 has increased its speed by 30%, reaching 16ppm in color and 24ppm in black and white. It can be regarded as the fastest printer among the low-end color printers of 10,000 yuan. Compared with ordinary sharpening, the LED one-shot printing technology adopted by OKI C5200 saves rotating equipment such as lenses and reduces manufacturing costs; in addition, it uses oil-free toner, which allows ballpoint pen writing and capping on the printed proofs. Office operations such as stamping and pasting; in addition, the OKI C5200 color printer can achieve a straight paper feeding method through the manual feeding tray, and can print a maximum of 1.2 meters long format.

Yingmei is a representative manufacturer of LED color printers in China, and its product series is quite complete. The LP-C1220 is an A4 format color LED printer launched in the middle of last year. Did you find this machine very similar to the previous OKI C5200? Of course, there is an “ambiguous” relationship between OEMs. We won’t go into details here. Due to the use of LED printing technology, the LP-C1220 has a color output efficiency of 12PPM and a black-and-white output efficiency of 24PPM, which is quite an advantage compared to shock. In terms of print quality, the LP-C1220 uses advanced automatic color balancing technology to ensure that the printed colors are as consistent as possible for output at all times.