Understanding Xerox Duplicators

By Author: Mingki Tsui
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If understanding Xerox® duplicators is your goal, then the first thing you need to know is what the company name is, and what it is not. It is a registered trademark, hence the circled "R" in superscript position. It is not a verb, so - while widely used - it is actually incorrect to talk about "xeroxing" a document. "Photocopying" is the correct term, and will keep you from infringing on the company's intellectual property - as if the firm has time to chase down the billion or so people on the planet who are misusing its name (besides, it's great free marketing). For the purposes of this article, however, "copier" and "photocopier" will suffice unless it is important to the explanation to use the company name.

Photocopiers work on the basis of static electricity. Like magnetic poles, electrical charges can be either negative or positive and, as we all remember from grade school, opposites attract but two positives or two negatives will repel one another. The same principle is at work when a positively charged knife or fork attracts grains of salt that are negatively charged. Photocopiers work on this simple physical ...
... property - attraction and repulsion - and does so on paper to create duplicates of other documents. Let's take it step by step.

Step by step
Under the transparent sheet of glass where you put the document you want copied is a round drum (in some models, a flat belt) whose surface is a "photoreceptor" of special material that can hold negative and positive charges, at the same time and in different locations. A "corona wire" crosses over the photoreceptor and imparts a positive charge to the whole surface, then a beam of intense light sweeps across the face of the document that is on the glass waiting to be copied. Photons from the light penetrate the white areas of the document, but not the black spots that make up the lettering and images - so the ones that get through neutralize the corresponding white areas of the drum, leaving the black areas charged.

Basically, the photocopier "spray paints" the photoreceptive material using static electricity instead of pigment. This results in areas of positively charged letters and images with areas that will stay white encompassing them. This is the point at which the negatively charged, black toner is applied, and will stick like glue to the positive areas of the drum. Conversely, toner will not adhere to the areas carrying the same (negative) charge as it has, thus leaving them white - more precisely, whatever color the paper happens to be, which is usually white, at any rate.

Baking the cake
After all the toner's particles have taken up their proper positions, a blank piece of paper is brought into the process above the photoreceptive drum. The corona wire sweeps across this paper, charging it positively, so that the toner particles are drawn to it as it moves along "the paper path." Toner particles are now arrayed in such a way as the replicate the original image, but the toner is not yet affixed to the paper.

As the paper continues its journey along its predetermined path carrying toner that is electrically charged to adhere to the paper, this "new copy" is passed through heated rollers called "a fuser." At this point, the physical processes change, and the toner melts onto the paper - rather, into its fibers. The heat is sufficient to permanently "set" the toner into the paper. On a fresh copy you can feel the heat, as well as smell the chemical bonding that is taking place under heat and pressure. Following every copy run the corona wire returns to duty, using a positive charge to clean off the photoreceptive drum or belt.

A true world changer
Communications technologies blossomed in the 1960s and began to supply an unending series of true, world-changing devices. The Xerox® machine can credibly claim to be one of the major advances in modern business and technology, as the power to make fast, cheap copies launched a productivity surge that begat more breakthroughs, such as (in short order) fax machines, computers and wireless technologies. In fact, political dissidents in the former Soviet Union and its satellites attribute the accelerating decline of the Evil Empire in its last decade or two to fax machines, copiers and computers.

There are variations of "xerography" being used today, but all are being gradually replaced by scanning technology. Scanners that digitize images are the future (for now), as the scanned file can be put to far more uses than a hard copy, such as what photocopying produces. It is fitting that technology continue its digital trajectory, but what thanks we should give to an elegant, exemplary analog idea that became one of the most successful, most influential inventions of all time. It's a standard tale in business schools around the world, as well it should be.
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