Brother Toner Cartridges

Brother have just announced the debut of five new printers, the HL3000 series of colour printers and the MFC9000 series of all in ones.  The really interesting news though is that they have moved their technology from a traditional toner and heat transfer technology to transfer images and text onto paper to LED printing technology.  Traditionally OKI have been the only mainline technology printer manufacturer to use this technology and this marks a fundamental shift in the production of printers for Brother.  This article by OKI describes the difference between the two technologies, but this marks a real shift in emphasis by Brother who have been manufacturing traditional laser printers for many years.  I think this is really exciting, but can’t find any information anywhere detailing why they have moved their technology or where they are likely to be moving in the future.

All the main printer manufacturers launch new product lines at this time of the year, but I’ll bet any money none of them announce anything as exciting or innovative as this new Brother range of printers.  There will be printers that have Wi-Fi connections, Printers that connect directly to the internet, but the essence of the printing ‘engine’ will not change as fundamentally as Brother have moved with this range of new printers.

OKI’s range of LED printers are cracking quality and good value, and I hope that this shift in technology benefits Brother equally.

Good Luck Brother I say

Prepare to have your mind blown all you who don't use oki toner cartridges! Printer choice goes further than inkjet and laser printing. waits for the gasps to die down

Now, we're not here to overload you with the technicalities of thermal and piezoelectric inkjet printing.

Instead, we are here to split laser printing down from its traditional laser printing methodology, to the new ever-expanding range of LED laser printers pioneered by oki.

What is LED Printing?

To answer this you first need a base understanding of how a normal laser printer works - shining a light source onto a light-sensitive drum which gives the selected areas a "positive charge". These charged areas attract toner when the drum rotates past.

Traditional laser printers do this via one light source, directed onto the page by a complicated series of mirrors and lenses. But LED printers trump this system, utilising a solid-state row of individual LED bulbs, covering the entire width of the drum.

What are the benefits of LED printing?

It's almost difficult to know where to start:

• High resolution prints - far smaller dot sizes than traditional lasers
• No moving parts - thus quieter and less risk of breakdown
• Far more reliable due to the lack of moving parts - minimum 5 year guarantee as standard reflects this.
• Lower maintenance costs
• Faster print speeds - only limited by flash speed of the LEDs and not impacted by resolution of what is being printed.
• Single-pass printing - minimising paper jams (unless you're my colleague who is a master of the art)

There is a beautiful example of the accuracy gains experienced by solid-state LEDs that I stumbled upon, highlighting just how accurate these machines are. The below images are taken of a size 2 text (0.7mm tall).

Oki Led Prints

HP Laser Prints

Lexmark laser prints

The accuracy of the printer really is something to behold! (images compliments of Okidata).

What are the drawbacks of LED printing?

The only real downside to rear its head so far is the limit placed on horizontal resolution, there are only so many LEDs you can fit in a physical space!

However this should never cause an issue with the typical documents those using laser printers should be printing. Impacting heavy image printing, it is unlikely an office laser would ever be called upon for these, and as such this drawback is negligible.

Indeed, the quality of the printouts has been so widely acclaimed that other manufacturers are now following the lead of Oki and moving into the LED market.

We've given it our thumbs up, every document you receive off of us is utilising both an LED printer, and our fantastic range of compatible oki toners. Buy something and see how crisp our paperwork is, that's the best way we can think to show you how LED is lighting the way.... pun intended.