Laser printer health and safety

For health and safety reasons, a laser printer like this should only be placed in a suitable location

It weighs about 140 pounds, which is about the weight of a lightweight to medium-weight person.

long-duty-cycle-laser-printer

This is quite a lot of weight, it’s like having a person like this sitting on a desk for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
This weight isn’t evenly distributed around the desk, it’s concentrated into a small area which is about 18 inches x 15 inches in size – the width and depth of the printer.
Opinions will vary about this but to my mind it isn’t a good idea to have this kind of concentrated weight pressing down on a lightweight computer desk, it doesn’t seem safe.
By lightweight computer desk I’m referring to the kind of desks which are often ’self-assembly’ – you assemble them yourself – and which are often assembled from wood which is only about 1\2 inch thick.
If this laser printer – or a laser printer with a similar weight – were placed on a lightweight computer desk like this with a 1\2 inch top it would certainly start to buckle the top of the desk.
Commonsense should warn us that when something starts to buckle, it isn’t good from a safety point of view. Things that start to buckle can eventually give way, and they often do.
This is a pretty pretty horrific thought but if someone were sitting at a desk, with their knees underneath it, and if a 150 pounds weight – the weight of a 150 pound laser printer – were to suddenly crash through that desk it would cause terrible injuries.
It’s been proven that a laser printer like this will cause a lightweight desk top to buckle, from personal experience. This is why this laser printer was removed from a lightweight computer desk and placed on its current desk, which is a sturdy professional office desk.
If you are considering buying a heavy-duty laser printer like this be sensible; place it only where you are absolutely certain that it will be safe, on a desk that you are absolutely certain can safely withstand the weight of the printer.