A complete photocopier glossary covering more than one hundred and forty terms

Hardware and chassis terms

MFP. Multifunction printer. The standard industry term for a copier that also prints, scans, and on most models faxes.Copier. Strictly, a single function machine that copies. In casual office speech, often used as a synonym for MFP.Chassis. The physical body of the machine including the panels, the frame, and the integrated paper paths.Print engine. The internal subsystem that actually produces marked paper. Includes drum, charge unit, exposure unit, developer, transfer, and fuser.Controller. The embedded computer that runs the touchscreen, the print queue, the scan workflows, and the cloud connectors.Drum. The rotating cylinder coated with photoconductor that holds the latent image and accepts toner during development.Photoconductor. A material whose conductivity changes with light exposure. Forms the active surface of the drum.Charge roller. A rubber roller that puts uniform negative charge onto the drum surface. Replaced corona wires across most office equipment over the 2000s.Corona wire. A high voltage wire stretched parallel to the drum that ionizes air to deposit charge on the drum surface. Older technology, mostly replaced by charge rollers.Developer unit. The component that holds toner and presents it to the drum during development.Toner. Polymer powder with embedded pigment that forms the printed image after fusing.Carrier. Magnetic beads inside the developer unit that transport and triboelectrically charge the toner.Transfer roller. A roller behind the paper that pulls toner from the drum onto the paper using positive voltage.Transfer belt. An intermediate conveyor between the imaging units and the paper on color machines. Carries the four CMYK separations registered together.Fuser. A pair of heated rollers that melts toner into the paper fibers permanently.Cleaning blade. A polyurethane edge that scrapes residual toner off the drum after transfer.Erase lamp. An LED row that resets the drum to neutral charge before the next charging cycle.

The full mechanical sequence that wires these components together is at How a photocopier actually works in six clear steps.

Paper handling terms

Platen. The flat glass surface on top of the chassis where a single original sits during a copy or scan.ADF. Automatic Document Feeder. The unit on top of the platen that pulls a stack of originals through one at a time.RADF. Reverse ADF. A document feeder that physically reverses each page to scan the back side.DADF. Duplex ADF. A document feeder that scans both sides without flipping the page mechanically.SPDF. Single Pass Duplex Feeder. Two scan heads read both sides in one pass through the feeder.Paper tray. A drawer or cassette below the chassis that holds a stack of paper for printing.Bypass tray. A side mounted manual feed for envelopes, labels, transparencies, and one off jobs.LCT. Large Capacity Tray. An add on tray holding 1,500 to 5,000 sheets for high volume operations.Pickup roller. The roller that takes the top sheet off the paper stack.Separation pad. A friction surface that prevents two sheets from feeding at once.Registration roller. The roller pair that aligns the leading edge of the paper to the imaging timing.Inverter. A path that flips paper for duplex printing.Duplex unit. The hardware that allows two sided printing on a single pass through the chassis.Simplex. Single sided printing.Duplex. Double sided printing.Auto duplex. Two sided printing without manual paper flipping.Finisher. An optional add on that staples, hole punches, folds, or saddle stitches output.Stapler unit. The component within a finisher that staples sets of pages.Hole punch unit. A punch in the finisher that creates 2 or 4 hole patterns.Saddle stitch. Booklet making where pages are folded in the middle and stapled along the spine.Perfect bind. Booklet making where pages are glued along a flat spine. Production class only.Z fold. A folding pattern that produces a zig zag fold for inserts.C fold. A folding pattern that produces three panels for letter mailers.

Cost and contract terminology

CPP. Cost Per Page. The per page fee on a service contract.TCO. Total Cost of Ownership. The full cost of acquiring and operating equipment over its life.MPS. Managed Print Services. A contract that handles all printing equipment and supplies for a flat fee.Click charge. The per page fee on a service contract. Synonym for CPP.Lease. A financing arrangement where the customer pays monthly and either returns or buys the equipment at end of term.FMV lease. Fair Market Value lease. End of term, the customer can buy the equipment at fair market value.Dollar buyout lease. End of term, the customer can buy the equipment for one dollar.Operating lease. A lease treated as a rental expense for accounting purposes.Capital lease. A lease treated as a purchase for accounting purposes.Evergreen clause. A contract clause that automatically renews the lease unless the customer gives written notice in advance.Auto renewal. The same as evergreen.SLA. Service Level Agreement. The contractual commitment for service response time and resolution.Block hours. A service plan billed by hours of technician time rather than per incident.All inclusive contract. A service contract that includes toner, parts, and labor at one rate.Toner inclusive. The same as all inclusive but specifically includes toner.RFP. Request For Proposal. A formal procurement document soliciting bids from multiple dealers.

Service and support vocabulary

Service contract. An agreement covering parts, labor, and toner for a fixed period.Maintenance kit. A bundle of consumable parts replaced together at scheduled intervals.PM. Preventive Maintenance. Scheduled service to replace wearing parts before failure.Field technician. A service person dispatched to the customer site.Remote diagnostics. Service infrastructure that monitors machine status and pre orders parts.e-RDS, eMaintenance, At Your Service, At Remote. Brand specific names for remote diagnostics across Konica Minolta, Canon, Ricoh, and Xerox.RPCS. Ricoh Printing Control System. Brand specific driver and remote management.uniFLOW, ConnectKey, HyPAS, Synappx, Workpath, Smart Operation Panel. Brand specific controller and app platforms for Canon, Xerox, Kyocera, Sharp, HP, and Ricoh.Firmware. The embedded software running on the controller.Service manual. Manufacturer documentation for technicians, not normally provided to end users.Code. A diagnostic identifier displayed on the panel during a fault. Brand specific. SC543 on Ricoh, E000 on Canon, J11 on Konica Minolta.End of lease. The termination point of a lease contract.Decommissioning. The process of removing a machine at end of lease, including data wipe and physical removal.Disk wipe. The procedure for overwriting the hard drive on the MFP before disposal or return.WEEE. Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. EU directive governing disposal of office electronics.RAEE. The Spanish term for WEEE.RGPD. The Spanish term for GDPR. The EU data protection regulation that applies to MFP hard drive content.HIPAA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. US healthcare data regulation that applies to copy and scan workflows in clinics.

The dealer segment classification that maps directly to many of these specifications is unpacked at What the industry copier segments from one through six actually mean for you.