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Years ago, I remember printing on a laser printer for the first time in the day took a long time because the fuser had to heat up, but I got a new laser printer recently and it can print in a few seconds first thing in the morning. How is it able to print so fast?

Tyler Durden
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1 Answers1

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The latest generation of laser printers warm up quickly because they use a new fuser technology, sometimes called "instant warm up". Instead of using a traditional metal roller, which takes a long time to heat, a thin membrane is used in conjunction with a heat lamp and a highly conductive metal heat transfer column. The difference is illustrated below:

instant warm up fuser technology

On the left, the traditional method is shown. On the right is the new, flexible membrane approach. The thin membrane heats up almost immediately and special column transfers heat directly to the "nip".

A side benefit of the new approach is that the nip is wider, so the quality of the fusing is higher, as well.

Tyler Durden
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    and some just keep the roller warm all the time... – Solar Mike Feb 12 '18 at 15:26
  • so that must contribute to much lower standby power draw as well, right? – davidbak Feb 12 '18 at 16:48
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    @SolarMike or are set to be warmed up by starting business hours. – ratchet freak Feb 12 '18 at 17:12
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    @SolarMike That's not possible due to Energy Star and other government energy regulations. The regulations take into account both standby power and overall weekly power consumption (so you can't force people to not standby). – user71659 Feb 12 '18 at 18:14
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    This technology has been around for quite some time; I had to take the fuser apart on my ten-year-old LaserJet after the toner cartridge exploded in the middle of a print job, and its internal structure was more-or-less as shown on the right. – zwol Feb 12 '18 at 19:26
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    Go even further back, and the cylinder was solid, heated from the outside. A hollow cylinder heated from within was itself a major improvement. – Joel Coehoorn Feb 12 '18 at 20:54
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    Our lights dim when you first turn our laserjet on; 1995 HP 5/5M color laserjet. 150lb, 10 amp nameplate. We love it. The paper is the highest cost of printing even after all the consumables. Never added in power to the equation though :) – Damon Feb 13 '18 at 02:39
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    +1 What do you look for in the specs to find such a laser printer? – user541686 Feb 13 '18 at 08:30
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    @user71659 Energy Star only talks about minimum power consumption. There can be modes which are not as energy efficient. – JonathanReez Feb 13 '18 at 18:49
  • @user71659 yes but it takes into account a certain mode of operation. E.g. it's not going to calculate the energy consumption of a separate "active heating" mode as long as an energy-efficient "standby" mode exists. – JonathanReez Feb 13 '18 at 20:25
  • @JonathanReez What's your point or are you being pedantic? The a typical printer has to have a [time-averaged power](https://www.energystar.gov/products/office_equipment/imaging_equipment/key_product_criteria) of roughly 20 watts per week, which is for a 600 W fuser, a duty cycle of 3%. You can't do that with the fuser on all the time, so they developed instant-on fuser technology to save power and people don't have to wait. Is your point that a product can be built with obsolete technology in a user-unfriendly manner? – user71659 Feb 13 '18 at 20:39
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    @Mehrdad Look for First Page Out times. For example, http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-laserjet-pro-m203dw-printer (HP 200-series) is 6.6s FPO. I'm not aware of any newish consumer-level products using the old fuser setup. The new way should be lighter and likely cheaper. (disclaimer; I work for HP but that doesn't mean I know what I'm talking about. I'm not an EP engineer, just peripherally exposed to it). And yeah, definitely no printer meeting any standards at all keep fusers preheated. – Undo Feb 14 '18 at 04:38