Thursday, December 17, 2009

If a laser printer had all the toner replaced with gunpowder- would it explode if someone tried to print to it

This is to settle an IT support department debate. For the record i'm not going to use the answer to assassinate any of our system users...no matter how annoying they might be.If a laser printer had all the toner replaced with gunpowder- would it explode if someone tried to print to it
Yes, yes it would.





You first problem would be the fact that a printer attracts toner with a high voltage electrostatic charge.





Bear with me here, gunpowder tends to react, violently to high levels of energy.





So lets say for the safe of argument that you manage to get the image to the page without blowing up the office, next in line is the fuser. Fusers generally hit about a couple hundred degrees. SO if you gunpowder document survived the electrostatic charge, surely the fuser would combust.If a laser printer had all the toner replaced with gunpowder- would it explode if someone tried to print to it
It may, since the toner is powdered form of ink, so the laser is used to ';melt'; the powder into liquid, so that it sould stay on the piece of paper. So if you put gunpowder in it, the laser will generate heat, and ignite the gunpowder, and create an explosion.
hahahaha I'm not sure, that is a great question though. Wouldn't it have to have some sort of spark or something though to ignite? Maybe it would do that from the electricity of the machine, but I'm really not sure. Nice question!

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