The Truth About Solid Ink

Truth: The solid ink print image is mechanically transferred from paper in a precise state without the ink spreading onto the paper. This makes its colour quality far less dependent on the paper’s surface. Since solid ink prints the same vivid colour on any paper, you can use recycled and even less expensive, lower quality paper for all of your printing. Unlike with aqueous inkjet devices, you don’t need super-white, smooth paper to get superb image quality with solid ink.

The true test is that solid ink products have been sold to very satisfied and loyal customers since 1991. The prints have a very similar look and feel to laser prints using chemically-grown toners that are currently on the market.

The SpencerLab Digital Colour Laboratory, an industry-recognized image quality expert, conducted testing to compare ColorQube 9200 series print quality with a range of toner-based multifunction printers, including the Canon imageRUNNER C5180, the Konica Minolta bizhub C650 and the Ricoh Aficio MP C5000. The thorough print quality evaluation showed the Xerox ColorQube 9203 multifunction printer offers competitive print quality in elements of a typical office document such as text, lines, images, tints and blends. The report concludes, "Our analysis supports Xerox’ contention that, in addition to its running cost and environmental benefits, solid ink technology can deliver competitive print quality for today’s office."

Truth: Print resolution, while a common spec people look at, does not tell the whole story about print quality. When evaluating print quality, you should examine print samples across a variety of prints on a variety of media. Solid ink is an entirely different print technology and uses a different printing process from xerography. Solid ink pixels are much more discrete and can be precisely placed to within ½ of a pixel. Although solid ink pixels (spots) are not smaller than toner particles, they can be placed as a single pixel, unlike toner particles that are placed on the image in "clumps" to create a single pixel. Colour-to-colour registration is manufactured into the solid ink print head—it is not developed at print time within the printing mechanism. Therefore, colour-to-colour output is more consistent with solid ink than with laser toner.

The aforementioned SpencerLab report shows the ColorQube 9203 solid ink multifunction printer offers competitive print quality on text, lines, images, tints and blends in typical office documents.

Truth: Earlier products were less durable than laser, but that was back in 1991 when solid ink was a new technology. Since then, we have improved ink formulation to reduce its pile height on paper. This makes prints more resistant to scratching. A comprehensive Comparative Image Permanence/Durability test conducted by Buyers Laboratory, Inc. (BLI) in May 2009 concludes that the Xerox ColorQube 9201/9202/9203 solid ink product’s image permanence is comparable to that of colour laser imaging technology. This proves current solid ink technology is well suited to standard office use.

BLI subjected print samples from the ColorQube 9200 series multifunction printer and three other laser multifunction printers to four tests:

1. Abrasion/smudge resistance
2. Offsetting
3. Document feeding
4. Writeability

In each image permanence/durability test, the ColorQube 9200 series prints received the same image permanence rating as the laser prints.

Truth: We have a folder of prints from our first solid ink printer developed in 1991 that have been stored in a filing cabinet. They were not stored in any special way and look identical to solid ink prints made yesterday.

Buyers Laboratory, Inc. (BLI) conducted a comprehensive Comparative Image Permanence/Durability test that concluded the Xerox ColorQube 9200 series solid ink product’s image permanence is comparable to that of colour laser imaging technology.

If you are looking to archive documents, you can digitally archive them with the ColorQube 9200 series. The powerful scanning capabilities, which are standard, let you back up critical documents – converting them into digital files for easy sharing and archiving while reducing the amount of physical storage space required. The scan to text searchable PDF/XPS capability also makes it much easier for you to retrieve a document when you need it compared to searching for it in a file cabinet.

Truth: For typical text-based based office documents, such as memos, charts and graphs, you can easily write on the paper itself. On pages with high colour coverage, certain pens may not write smoothly on the image, but that is no different from other technologies on the market.

Buyers Laboratories, Inc. (BLI) recently conducted a writeability test comparing ColorQube 9200 series multifunction printer output with output from three of the ColorQube 9200 series' competitors. BLI employed the ASTM Designation F2294-03, a test designed to determine whether specific writing instruments (for instance, blue, black and red pens; a No. 2 pencil; an Avery Hi-Liter; and a black Sharpie marker) can be used to write legibly over each print sample, without skipping or smearing. The ColorQube 9200 series received the same scores as the three laser multifunction printers.

Truth: The ink's melting temperature is close to the boiling point of water. Normal use and storage temperatures do not come close to this. Saying solid ink prints melt in hot weather is simply no more true than saying laser prints burst into flames. At some temperature, both are true, but not at any realistic office or storage temperature.

Truth: Waste is not unique to solid ink. Laser-based products produce waste toner that is collected in a waste toner bottle which requires replacement and disposal when full. The waste toner bottle cannot be recycled. Waste from solid ink is non-toxic and can be safely disposed of in your local waste stream.

Truth: We have built smart technology into solid ink products so that if one print head becomes clogged temporarily, other print heads around it compensate for it. Then the clogged print head fixes itself through calibration. No service call is needed. Also, our cleaning cycle is very short and consumes only a small amount of ink (about 3 grams per colour for the Phaser 8560 and Phaser 8860 printers).

Truth: Although important, a device's power consumption has the least environmental impact when compared to paper and landfill consumable waste. Even so, we go to great lengths to build power-saving features into our products, and solid ink printers are no exception. For instance, our Intelligent Ready software learns your usage patterns and further optimizes power consumption by moving into a "power save" mode when you are least likely to use the printer. Thanks to smart features like Intelligent Ready, the Phaser 8860 solid ink printer requires only half the power to print a given page compared with the HP Colour LaserJet 4700 printer during actual printing.

The ColorQube 9200 series of solid ink multifunction printers meets the new stringent 2009 ENERGY STAR 1.1 requirements. The ColorQube 9200 series leverages all of the latest, most energy-efficient technologies, including electronics, power supplies and insulation for the components that need to stay warm. It also leverages new software algorithms to lower power consumption, enabling the ColorQube 9200 series to be 2009 ENERGY STAR qualified. The ENERGY STAR program is an international program with increasingly stringent requirements and is designed so that only 25% of products in the marketplace meet the requirements.

Actual energy consumption is really based on usage patterns. The ColorQube 9200 series uses a little bit more electricity than a comparable laser device when idle (about 61 watts), but actually uses 400 fewer watts than a comparable laser device while printing.

The ColorQube 9200 series also has Intelligent Ready software built in to minimize power consumption. Using the ENERGY STAR's Typical Energy Consumption (TEC) test protocol, the ColorQube 9200 series consumes slightly more energy per week than a comparable laser, resulting in a cost of about $0.70 per week, $3 per month or $36 per year. Even though you might pay $36 more per year in electricity, that pales to the $2,000 you’d save each year on colour printing costs with the ColorQube 9200 series. Energy is less than 3% of overall cost of ownership for this class of product.

Power consumption is only a small part in the whole sustainability story. Any one of our solid ink products can put you on the path to a greener workplace. Cartridge-free solid ink sticks avoid the excessive packaging of toner cartridges.

This means fewer resources are used and less energy is invested in manufacturing and transporting solid ink. That translates to 90% less waste in your office (88 lbs for ColorQube 9201/9202/9203 vs. 815 lbs for Canon 5180 over four years) and a smaller carbon footprint across the product lifecycle. This information is based on a Xerox-conducted lifecycle assessment that was peer-reviewed by the Rochester Institute of Technology. The assessment compares a solid ink device to a comparable colour laser multifunction device.

Truth: Solid ink prints can be fed reliably through any document feeder on the market today, and it can be placed directly on the platen glass while copying without sticking.

Truth: This is generally not an issue in the typical office environment where machines are not powered off. Machines left idle automatically go into lower power modes. Xerox developed a patented Intelligent Ready power management feature that "learns" the unique print usage patterns of your office. The device will be in Ready mode when you need it, and in its lowest energy state when not needed, maximizing energy efficiency. This feature can result in pages being generated in as fast as 7.2 seconds.

Truth: Moving printers and multifunction printers after installation is a rare event. It is best to allow the ink to solidify before moving the solid ink printer or multifunction printer when the rare occasion arises. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes for the ink to solidify after the machine is turned off. Once the ink is in a solid state, the machine can be moved as easily and readily as any other technology.

Truth: Companies have used meter reads to calculate their printing costs for years. Software powers the meter read functionality. Similar software is used in the ColorQube 9200 series, but it is more sophisticated. It distinguishes between a page with 5% colour usage and a page with 90% colour usage and charges you less for the 5% coverage page than for the 90% coverage page. Other colour laser technologies on the market today charge the same price whether you print 5% colour or 90% colour on a page.

The calculation of the amount of colour on a page is integrated into the normal processing of files as they are converted for printing on a ColorQube 9200 series multifunction printer. Useful, Everyday, and Expressive Colour pages all have the same print quality.

Truth: Solid ink printing is not brand-new. It uses a very reliable technology that has been on the market since 1991. Xerox continues to build on the tremendous success of solid ink technology with each new generation. We also borrow from the best aspects of our other printing and multifunction technologies to improve solid ink. For example, we combine solid ink technology with common hardware modules, such as the DADF, HCF, and finishing options available today on other Xerox multifunction printers. The controller, or "brains," inside the device is also common with that of other Xerox products on the market.

With the ColorQube 9200 series, customers will experience all of the advantages of solid ink – 90% less waste, substantial cost savings for printing in colour, glossy and vibrant prints even on recycled paper, and cartridge-free ease of use – along with the user experience, productivity, security and reliability they’ve come to expect from a Xerox multifunction printer.

In fact, reliability is one of the ColorQube 9201/9202/9203 product’s strengths. The ColorQube 9200 series underwent rigorous evaluation with the independent research organization Buyers Laboratory (BLI), where it earned excellent reliability scores and was rated 4.5 out of 5 stars. The product’s life and reliability were demonstrated to 90% confidence with more than 75 million prints on over 200 ColorQube 9200 series machines, and more than 557 million prints on over 50 ColorQube 9200 series engine test beds.

The majority of components are designed to last the life of the product, contrary to what our competitors are saying. With solid ink, there is only one customer-replaceable unit: a long-life Cleaning Unit with an average yield of 200,000 prints. There are also only two components for service: a DADF Roller with a projected life of 150,000 feeds, and the pick rollers in the trays with a projected life of 600,000 feeds (which, by the way, are also required of laser devices). Everything else in the print engine, including the print heads, drum and drive systems, are designed to last the life of the product.