Besides the much greater speed, enhancements over the line printer included:[2] Later the 3800 family supported Advanced Function Presentation (AFP), a page description language with features similar to Xerox Corporation's Interpress or Adobe Systems' PostScript.

This meant prototyping used an IBM Copier I, which was not capable of anywhere near the product goal of 1 million pages per month.

Therefore, dramatic developments were required in areas such as: paper path handling, lasers and optics, toner fusion and control electronics.

[11] There are competing claims about which device was the first commercially available plain paper laser printer.

[24] The model 001 was the only model that supported the tape to print feature (Feature Code 7810), where an IBM 3411/3410 or IBM 3803/3420 reel to reel tape drive could be attached to the 3800, allowing the printer to operate in an offline mode.

[27] The three main goals of the model 003 were:[28] To improve the resolution, a new photoconductor material had to be used in combination with a specially designed digital voltmeter and a significant redesign of the laser print head.

[32] By using low helium diffusion glass, IBM increased the life of the laser to 20,000 operation hours, an improvement of 10× over off-the-shelf products available at that time.

[33] The hot roll that fuses the toner to the page needed to operate without silicone oil (to avoid contamination)[34] and to have an extended life, so a new elastomer material was developed as well as a multi-zone preheat platen to warm the paper to 104 °C (219 °F) prior to fusion.

An LED sensor would monitor this mark and this was used to control how much toner was routinely fed into the developer mix.

Although not an innovation it is worth noting that IBM chose to use discharged area development on the 3800.

After placing a static charge on the photoconductor the laser was then used to discharge the parts of the surface where characters needed to be developed.

IBM developed this to avoid patent infringement with Xerox (who used a photoconductor based on selenium).

[35] The IBM developed organic photoreceptor (OPC) used a chemical known as 2, 4, 7-trinitro-9-fluorenone, commonly referred to as TNF.

[36] The photoconductor was mainly composed of a TNF and polyvinyl carbazole resin coating on an aluminized mylar sheet and was manufactured by IBM in Lexington Kentucky.

It was a cut sheet, duplex, non-impact, all-points-addressable AFP page printer that operated at 58 impressions per minute[55] It was withdrawn from marketing in 1995.

It was a cut sheet, duplex, non-impact, all-points-addressable AFP page printer that operated at 92 impressions per minute.

It was a cut sheet, duplex, non-impact, all-points-addressable AFP page printer that operated at 92 impressions per minute.

[56] The IBM 3835 was announced in 1988 and was an intermediate speed fanfold AFP page printer that operated at 88 impressions per minute.

[61] The IBM 3935 was announced in November 1993 and was an intermediate speed duplex capable cut sheet AFP page printer that operated at 35 impressions per minute.

[62] In 2007 IBM formed a joint venture, InfoPrint Solutions Company, with Ricoh.

The new company, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, took over all of IBM Printing Systems Division products, including the successors to the 3800 line.

[63] In 2010 IBM divested its share and the new company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Ricoh.