Dry toner machines can duplicate, reduce, and enlarge original drawings or blueprint copies. Wet toner plotters are designed to interface with CAD systems to make direct printouts of computer-based drawings. They are not designed for duplicating or reducing and enlarging original prints. Typical engineering facilities that produce drawings and graphics use both wet toner plotters for hard copy CAD printouts and dry toner copiers for duplicating wet toner prints and blueline machine prints. Dry toner is a fine powder composed of resin, pigments, and minor quantities of functional additives depending on the specific machine and manufacturer.
Electrostatic plotters use a wet toner and replenisher rather than a dry toner.
The toner is prepared by mixing separate clear and black solutions to create a suspension of particles. The optical density of the toner is monitored by a sensor. Since the toner tends to physically settle and chemically deteriorate over time, replenisher, a concentrated form of toner, is automatically added in small amounts to the toner solution to maintain an optimum optical density. Shaking or agitating the toner containers may extend the use of the toner by resuspending toner pigment. Waste Management Dry toner copiers produce a waste stream of dry waste toner that is collected in plastic recovery vessels within the copier.