Canon ORIGINAL SAMPLE TO: Canon Dealers FROM: Canon U.S.A., Inc. / Copier Division DATE: August 13, 1990 SUBJECT: BASIC CONCEPTS OF DIGITAL COPIERS A digital copier consists of two separate units: a "scanner unit" that "reads" the original image, and a "printer unit" that takes the signal transmitted by the scanner unit, recon- structs it, and produces ("prints") a copy of the original The scanner unit has a function similar to that of the scan- ner of a conventional copier: it illuminates the original document so that an optical system can form an image. The main difference is that its output is not the optical image, but a serial digital electrical signal that carries all the in- formation of the document (the dark and light areas on the page). The optical image form a narrow strip across the document is passed by mirrors and focused by a lens on a linear array of several thousand photocells, each of which receives the image of only a very small area (pixel) of the strip across the paper (the narrow strip advances continu- ously from the top of the page to the bottom). Each photocell generates an analog voltage in proportion to the strength of the light striking it. The voltages are then successively converted to a serial analog signal that subse- quently produces a digital signal. This signal can then be modified to alter the reproduction ratio, reverse black and white, and produce other effects; this is "signal processing". After any such signal processing, the electrical signal goes via the transmission cable to printer unit, where it switches a laser beam ON and OFF (modulates) as the laser beam scans repeatedly across a photosensitive drum, like that of a conventional copier. In locations corresponding to pixels rep- resenting a dark area, the laser is switched ON and the beam of laser light strikes the photosensitive drum in that location. Where a pixel was light, the laser remains OFF. The result, by the reaction of the drum to light, is an elec- trostatic latent image on the drum. Subsequent development, transfer, and fixing produce a copy by exactly the same pro- cesses as are used in a conventional Canon copier