Uninterruptible Power Supplies

[GreyGeek]

Re: Uninterruptible Power Supplies

.....
Why shouldn't one have a laser printer on a UPS?
....

The toner is made of microscopic plastic spheres with colored pigment embedded on their surfaces. It is attracted by electrostatic charge to the Selenium covered drum. When the drum is rolled over a sheet of paper the toner is transfered to the paper. It is still a powder and can be easily smeared or wiped off the sheet. The coated paper sheet then passes over a heated roll bar, or between two of them. They are called "Fusers". The heat from the Fuser is hot enough to melt the plastic causing it and the Carbon to fuse to the paper. The Fuser is not kept hot. It is heated up only when the laser is requested to print something. Because the user does not want to wait 5 minutes while the Fuser is heated, the quartz tube lamp inside the Fuser is rated at 700 Watts or more. This is enough power to heat the surface of the Fuser to 300F. Teflon on the surface of the Fuser keeps the toner from sticking to it.

Essentially, color printers work the same way as monochrome printers, except they go through the entire printing process four times -- one pass each for cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black. By combining these four colors of toner in varying proportions, you can generate the full spectrum of color.

There are severl different patented methods used to heat fusers but the quartz lamp is the most common.

[flarson]

Re: Uninterruptible Power Supplies

APC makes good systems and linux has apcupsd which works very well for monitoring the UPS and shutting down automatically. It is fully configurable. There is no reason that you can not run for 2 hours on battery if you want to. It will cost less than $200. The onesthat have the USB to RJ45 cable are very easy to setup. Apcupsd even has a network daemon so that youcan run multiple computers from one UPS and each of them will receive the information through the computer to which the UPS is connected.

sudo aptitude install apcupsd apcupsd-cgi apcupsd-doc

Go for it. You will be pleased.

[DeathKitten]

Re: Uninterruptible Power Supplies

.....
Why shouldn't one have a laser printer on a UPS?
....

The toner is made of microscopic plastic spheres with colored pigment embedded on their surfaces. It is attracted by electrostatic charge to the Selenium covered drum. When the drum is rolled over a sheet of paper the toner is transfered to the paper. It is still a powder and can be easily smeared or wiped off the sheet. The coated paper sheet then passes over a heated roll bar, or between two of them. They are called "Fusers". The heat from the Fuser is hot enough to melt the plastic causing it and the Carbon to fuse to the paper. The Fuser is not kept hot. It is heated up only when the laser is requested to print something. Because the user does not want to wait 5 minutes while the Fuser is heated, the quartz tube lamp inside the Fuser is rated at 700 Watts or more. This is enough power to heat the surface of the Fuser to 300F. Teflon on the surface of the Fuser keeps the toner from sticking to it.

Essentially, color printers work the same way as monochrome printers, except they go through the entire printing process four times -- one pass each for cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black. By combining these four colors of toner in varying proportions, you can generate the full spectrum of color.

There are severl different patented methods used to heat fusers but the quartz lamp is the most common.

The more posts I see from you, the more I start to wonder if you're a collective mind... as the amount of information you spew forth for the rest of us to read seems too much to fit in one mind. Also, your explanation about how the laser printer works was fascinating, but I didn't see anything in there that specifically explained why one doesn't want one on a UPS.

Also, while my retail roots had me selling printers, computers and other techy stuff (used to work at Radio Scrap, now I'm at one of the big chain office supply stores in the US), I have within the last six months become a printing department lacky. So to say I am familiar with the process of a laser printer might be a little on the light side.

That said, I have been wishing death upon my color laser as of late, it keeps jamming in the finisher. The tech installed a new motor for me today, and it jammed up on him maybe 15 minutes after he'd finished his test prints, and I started running the backlog of crap to run that accumulated while he was working. It did seem to behave the rest of the evening after he finished adjusting the belt attached to this new motor. So I am hoping that the machine will behave again, at least for a while.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Uninterruptible Power Supplies

but I didn't see anything in there that specifically explained why one doesn't want one on a UPS.

That would be the part where he says:

the Fuser is rated at 700 Watts or more

Add 700 Watts to what you already have on the UPS and it is likely too much for it. Providing that much power just for a printer is doable, but would be a bit of a luxery since you pay quit a bit for the Watts you're getting.

[askrieger]

Re: Uninterruptible Power Supplies

Once again, one word: SURGES The printer is sitting there doing nothing. All of a sudden it has to draw enough power to heat up the drum to melt the toner, etc. in a very small number of milliseconds and then do it again a fraction of a second later for the next page. This is not a very steady power demand. If you tried to pass this demand through the circuitry of a UPS, which is devoted to providing a steady output of power, your UPS would have to be very differently designed than it is.