Solid ink printing technology: pros and cons. Solid ink printers for color printing Positive feedback from specialists

In the last five years, a very strange situation has developed on the market for home and office printers. On the one hand, there are several large manufacturers that regularly update their model lines and are seriously competing with each other. On the other hand, the IT journalist has absolutely nothing to write about their struggle. The business press can juggle market shares and other boring things at least a little. And our person, looking more closely at the "new" models, immediately notices that from a technical point of view, no major improvements are observed in them. Rather, on the contrary - in parallel with the addition of various decorations, such as high-definition LCD screens, the actual printing part is simplified.

This primarily applies, of course, to inkjet printers, where progress has stalled in the middle of this decade. I find it hard to believe it myself, but even HP, which once set the pace in the race to increase the number of ink tanks in photo printers, today considers it sufficient to use only four colors. Four! This is after NINE in the older HP Photosmart models five years ago! Four inkpots in those days were considered acceptable only for very simple models, where photo printing is not the main function. You can still find eight-color models at Epson, but they have been produced for the second five-year period (for example, the eight-color Epson R800 went on sale back in 2004), and the new items do not cross the six-color barrier. And in terms of the main characteristics, such as print resolution and drop size, Epson printers and MFPs have not gone ahead over the past five years. Take a look at the characteristics of laser devices - they have not changed for a long time either, either in black and white or in color models. So why did the industry, which was developing so rapidly at the beginning of the century, take and "slow down"?

The marketers of the printing device manufacturers are to blame, of course. At the turn of the century, when digital cameras entered the mass market, they suddenly decided that this was their chance. They say that since citizens no longer need to go to laboratories to develop film, they themselves will prefer to print the photos at home, and not at someone else's uncle's. If so, they urgently need to ensure the quality of the minilab right on the desktop. The photo printer market seemed huge, and a lot of money was invested in R&D, both in inkjet and laser directions. It was planned that inkjet machines would settle at home, and laser photo printers (such were also developed) would be actively bought up by companies using high-quality pictures in their work (i.e. from real estate agencies to mail-order shops).

At first, everything went well: people, by inertia, continued to print photographs on paper, because it seemed to be accepted that way. But then suddenly it came to the understanding that, it turns out, the pictures look good on the computer screen, and there are also mobile phones, laptops, digital photo frames, smart players, etc. etc. And for transferring them over long distances, optical media, flash drives and e-mail are better suited. As the retirees mastered computer technology, the last hope of photo printer manufacturers, the demand for really high-quality printing in home or office conditions was melting. All the citizens really wanted was to print quickly and, most importantly, cheaper. Well, if where some shade is not accurately transmitted, it’s not scary. And even those who continued to print photographs on paper still rushed to minilabs, where the price of a print is one and a half or two times cheaper than a home-made one, especially when it comes to large formats.

As a result, printer manufacturers have received highly advanced printing technologies without the slightest chance of recouping their development costs as planned. Having resigned themselves and realizing that the existing groundwork for the quality of the picture will last for a long time, everyone switched to increasing the printing speed and reducing the price of both the devices themselves and prints. An equally important area of \u200b\u200bmodernization was the damage to the lives of manufacturers of so-called compatible cartridges and toner, which prevented at least the price of the device itself. The development of new, alternative printing technologies, if not stopped, then significantly slowed down. And then the global financial crisis began ...

This long introduction has been written to help you understand the harsh environment Xerox is trying to bring to market a solid-state MFP that is radically different from both inkjet and laser printers.

⇡ Solid outside, liquid inside

The idea of \u200b\u200busing solid consumables in printers has long been in the minds of developers, and among the companies where it came to at least prototypes are Howtek, Exxon, Dataproducts, Hitachi, Spectra and Brother. The most successful of all were the experiments of the American company Tektronix, which in 1986 patented the technology of printing with solid ink (Solid Ink), and in 1991 began selling the world's first color printer where this technology was applied.

The Tektronix Phaser III was printing on letter-size paper (slightly smaller than the A4 we are used to), and it took about two minutes to print on one sheet. Considering that we are talking about a full-color print of a very decent quality for those times, the speed could be called very acceptable. But the price - $ 10,000 - made many think (for comparison, a black and white laser printer in those days cost around $ 2,400). Plus, the first implementation of the technology left much to be desired. After all, the ink remained solid only until it got inside the printer. In the same place, solid blocks, consisting of a mixture of wax, toner and vegetable oils, turn into a liquid with a temperature of more than a hundred degrees. At first, with the help of a movable head weighing - attention - 1.8 kg were applied directly to the paper, and therefore, among users who were too lazy to attend to the correct fastening, printers galloped around offices like crazy washing machines. When installing on a table, a thicker tree should be chosen, and the legs should be fixed to the floor with self-tapping screws. In fact, the print speed, which was not high by our standards, was precisely connected with the need to constantly accelerate and brake a heavy head. There was no way to guarantee accurate reproduction of shades even within the same print. Due to the nature of the technology, it was impossible to observe the order of the drops of ink of different colors on the paper. For example, if yellow was applied first, and then magenta, the red tint was obtained slightly different than when overlaying yellow over magenta. Add to that the lingering smell of either a candle factory or an artist's workshop in the room where the printer was used, and you can see why Tektronix's solid-state ink business hasn't gone well.

Despite the difficulties, Tektronix continued to develop the technology, and the engineers made significant progress, which, however, prevented Color Printing and Imaging from achieving an acceptable financial performance. In 2000, it was sold to Xerox Corporation along with all Phaser patents and trademarks. Today the corporation produces devices that print on A4 and A3 paper. Despite the differences in exterior and dimensions, they are arranged very similarly, and they bizarrely combine inkjet and offset printing technologies.

So, today the print head is stationary, and it does not touch the surface of the paper at all. Printing is carried out on a rotating drum made of anodized aluminum, which is cleaned of ink residues and covered with a thinnest layer of silicone grease before each cycle. The width of the head repeats the width of the drum, and has an operating temperature of 135 degrees Celsius, while the drum itself warms up only to 65 degrees. Ink, falling on the drum, instantly thickens and is fixed on its surface. When the head (which, given its size, I would like to call head) finishes the work, a slightly warmed sheet appears in the tray, it is pressed against the drum with a special roller, and in one pass the entire image is transferred to the paper. The ink layer is very thin and the paper is almost cold, so no additional curing operations are required.

Due to the relative simplicity of the technology and the minimum of moving elements in the design, the print speed in the older Xerox ColorQube models reaches 85 A4 color prints per minute! And the younger ones give up to 60 pages, which, you see, is also not bad at all. Considering that ink practically does not interact with paper, you can print fairly high-quality photos even on ordinary office papers. Moreover, thanks to the wax base, they will shine like the pages of glossy magazines. Due to the high "tenacity" of the ink and the low heating of the carrier, you can print on films, and even on foil - the main thing is to choose more or less dense samples. The engineers also managed to overcome the odor problem: modern models are completely neutral in this parameter. If we remember that the price of a color print on a solid-state ink printer turns out to be two times lower than on a laser one, it is worth asking the question: why has the Xerox-Tektronix technology not yet conquered the entire market?

⇡ Little things in life

Briquettes of solid-state ink look cute and even appetizing - probably not in vain in the mid-nineties the president of Tektronix at one of the presentations took a bite and ate a piece of such an “inkwell”. In order to avoid confusion, each color has its own shape, and therefore it is almost impossible to place a block in the wrong place by mistake (except perhaps to grind it with a file or crumble it).

They do not melt in their hands, they treat falls during transportation with understanding, the shelf life is practically unlimited, you can load from 3 to 6 briquettes of each color at the same time, depending on the model. An important nuance: after installation in the printer, the user has only a small box made of recyclable plastic. For residents of the States and Western Europe, this is a very serious advantage against the background of ink cartridges or, even worse, toner. In general, such printers have few consumables: only the ink itself and the cleaning module, which also contains silicone grease. Everything else, from the head to the drum, will last for at least five years (the head resource is at least a million prints), and, if necessary, can also be replaced. Although, most likely, by then it will be easier to buy a new model.

But here we come to the first disharmony. Once in the reservoir aligned with the print head, ink becomes liquid from solid, and should remain so until it gets on paper or other media. They are stored at a non-curing temperature pending use, and as long as the printer is plugged in, everything is almost fine. Almost - because heating the ink consumes electricity. But if someone turns off the printer, or the power goes out, the ink will dry out and become unusable. The next time you turn it on, the printer will warm them up and pour them into the special waste tray. In large A3 printers, the losses will be relatively small, in the region of 4% of the volume of one briquette, but in relatively portable models (due to design features, printers with solid-state ink cannot yet be completely compact), where the bars are much smaller, it is consumed up to 20%, and this is already much more serious. Such features of the technology are very disliked by users and are the object of ridicule for competitors.

On the left is the waste ink tray, on the right is the cleaning module

The second disharmony is the slow start of the print. More precisely, if the ink is warmed up to the desired level, the first page comes out of the printer almost instantly. But keeping them perfectly fluid at all times is too expensive, so when the printer is "sleeping", they are kept thick enough to save energy. The "wake-up" time is up to fifteen minutes, and this, to put it mildly, is not very advantageous against the background of laser solutions. Xerox engineers have figured out how to get around the problem: a freshly installed printing device carefully examines the behavior of its owners for two weeks, and determines when to be fully prepared, and when to take a nap. I did not check it myself, but Xerox says that the system works quite efficiently, and a solid ink printer consumes no more than its laser counterpart with similar characteristics per circle. So, the new models have power consumption in sleep mode not exceeding 50 W, and this is really a little against the background of general office costs.

The prints look very impressive at first: rich shades, smooth color transitions, glossy shine. But if you run over the picture with your fingernail or the back of the fountain pen, you will certainly leave a strip on it - the wax is very delicate and is not prepared for mechanical stress. Moreover, the higher the print quality and, accordingly, the thicker the ink layer, the "softer" the print. It is also categorically not recommended to laminate it: from the high temperature in the laminator, the wax will simply spread in all directions. Also, do not print blanks on a solid-state printer, such as letterheads or certificates of honor, which then have to go through a laser printer: the laser is too hot for wax.

Closing the list of technology disharmony is the increased sensitivity of printing devices to external influences. So, if a printer or MFP gets a strong enough push (who knows - what fantasies will office workers have?), Or if they want to move it without waiting thirty minutes from the moment of complete shutdown, ink may spill (remember the temperature of 125 degrees) with extremely unpleasant consequences for internal parts. Damage of this kind is easily calculated and cannot be repaired under warranty.

⇡ Success in spite of everything?

The first models of Xerox with solid ink printing technology were accepted by the market in a rather restrained manner. Firstly, there were enough shortcomings in them, and, secondly, the competitors hurried in advance and organized a powerful campaign in the best traditions of black PR. Until now, on Youtube you can find surprisingly high-quality and funny videos (rumor attributes them to HP) about the unlucky system administrator Karl, who installed a Xerox printer in the office and daily rakes in full for it from colleagues and bosses. Printers smell bad, turn off spontaneously, spoil ink - in general, if you are interested, do a search for "Carl Xerox solid ink". Xerox especially dislikes the white bear, which Karl is so concerned about protecting.

But in 2009, a new ColorQube line was released, supporting A3 format and consisting of three models, 9201, 9202 and 9203. Outwardly, they look the same, and differ only in performance. So, if in black and white mode the print speed for the whole trio is the same, from 38 to 85 A4 pages per minute, then in color the peak speed is 60, 70 and 85 A4 pages per minute, respectively. Otherwise, it is completely similar: 512 MB of RAM, 80 GB hard drive, four gradations of print quality with a resolution of 600x600 DPI, fax, scanner with automatic document feeder and a lot of options, from a booklet finisher to two-line fax.

And these office MFPs unexpectedly "shot" for many, they began to be snapped up like hot cakes, and there is still a certain shortage of Xerox ColorQube on the American market. Not the same as on the iPhone 4, but still quite tangible considering that the price of the younger model starts at $ 22,500. Agree, the figure is quite impressive for spontaneous shopping.

There are two reasons for success. Firstly, the next incarnation of Xerox solid ink technology got rid of very obvious drawbacks, such as a 20 percent loss of useful volume of ink when switched off and an unpleasant smell. More precisely, the same amount of ink is lost, just the bars have become larger, but purely psychologically, 4% are perceived easier than 20%.

Secondly, in developed countries, devices of this class are usually not bought, but taken on lease, and payment is often made by the number of prints, divided into color and black and white. And when companies offer to choose between several devices of similar characteristics, but only on one, color printing costs almost half the price ... In general, you understand. Plus, unlike laser devices, there is no strict division into color and black-and-white prints: the area occupied by a color picture is calculated, and if we are talking about a small logo, the price of printing a specific document may practically not increase.

By the way, the emergence of compatible briquettes can serve as an indirect evidence of the popularity of new MFPs. True, Xerox does not recommend using them for obvious reasons, but those who have tried them do not post terrible things on the forums. In no case do I urge you to use clones, you just need to understand that Chinese craftsmen rarely clone consumables of completely "dead" products.

⇡ Hard answer

Despite all the limitations of solid ink technology, I sincerely wish it success. If players of the caliber of Xerox and HP get into a serious battle, consumers will certainly not get any worse.

Just keep in mind that solid-state ink will not appear in home printers soon, if at all. This is a technology for high volumes of printing, and at home, where printers and MFPs work with dust collectors most of the time, it has nothing to do. Nevertheless, if you want to be original, you can buy the cheapest of the solid state machines - the Xerox Phaser 8560. It prints up to 30 A4 pages per minute (it doesn't matter black and white or color), costs from 35,000 rubles, and a set of briquettes for 1000 sheets will cost about 3300 rubles.

About which I only recently learned to my shame, let me tell you more about one "novelty" for me personally.

If you ask a random person about what kind of printers there are, he will immediately answer: inkjet and laser. The older generation will still remember matrix devices - but that's all over. In fact, there are also a number of technologies, and one of them has serious advantages over the others listed.

It's about solid ink printers. Who knew about these?

The history of solid ink printing began in the mid-1980s, when the first printers using this principle appeared. They entered the market in 1991, but the truly unusual technology was revealed only ten years later, when engineers at Xerox began to develop it. They were faced with a non-trivial task - to make an unusual technology so inexpensive and simple to fully reveal its advantages.

How does a solid ink printer differ from our usual inkjet and laser printers? An inkjet printer creates an image from multi-colored dots, which are applied by a print head - a matrix with liquid dyes. The picture is clear, with good halftone reproduction, but the "inkjet" works rather slowly, and the image comes out unstable, prone to fading, blurring or erasure. The laser printer uses xerography; dry ink (toner) is distributed over a drum that rolls over the paper. Then the resulting print is fixed using heat treatment. The laser scanner works quite quickly, but the print quality of color halftone images (for example, photographs) is lower than with inkjet printing.

In addition, new laser printer cartridges are quite expensive, in some cases almost reaching the cost of the device itself. Solid ink printing combines the characteristics of known technologies while avoiding their disadvantages. To refuel such a printer, not expensive consumable cartridges to be disposed of are used, but ... ink briquettes! That is, the consumable is fully such, without leaving behind anything superfluous. In addition, the design of the solid ink printer minimizes the number of moving elements, which reduces wear tenfold. How does this device work?

Drums and rollers

Simply put, the solid ink circuit includes only four elements - a stationary ink loader (in which the bars are melted), a print head, an aluminum drum on which the image is applied and from where it is transferred to a sheet of paper, and a lubricating roller designed to apply silicone grease to the surface drum. This scheme is, one might say, a "hybrid" of inkjet and laser, and at the same time includes some features of offset printing. At the same time, solid ink printers were originally intended for color printing - in contrast to their "parents" who have experienced the evolution from monochrome to color.

Fact number 1. The first solid ink printers printed quite slowly, at a speed of about 1 page per minute. The print speed of modern devices reaches 30 ppm.

Briquettes of four colors (classic CMYK), similar in consistency to candle wax, are inserted into the receiving compartments of the printer - that is, into the ink loader. As needed, they melt, touching one end with the heating plate, and are fed into the reservoirs of the print head. Interestingly, the Xerox company came up with a "shape coding": each bar, in addition to color, has a different shape, it cannot be inserted into someone else's "nest". It is possible to report the bars even during printing - the head itself and the receiving windows are separated. The bars, by the way, are made of a polymer based on resin and something similar to chalk (of course, the exact formula is kept secret) - they are non-toxic and biodegradable. Meanwhile, the print head, equipped with special nozzles, feeds the melted ink onto a rotating drum covered with silicone oil. The drum is about twice as cold as the head (65 ° vs. 135 °) and the ink thickens. In the process of printing, the transfer roller is pressed against the drum - the paper falls right into the gap between the drum and the roller. The adhesion between the drum and the ink is extremely low - and the latter stick to the paper in a predetermined sequence, where they finally solidify. It would seem that everything is perfect. But there are reasons why solid ink printers are ideal for some industries and not entirely profitable for others.

Pros and cons

In principle, we have already talked about the advantages: almost complete zero-waste printing, simplicity of design and, therefore, durability, low operating cost, high speed of work. There is one more plus - the print quality does not decrease over time (even laser drums wear out, but this problem is not here). In addition, printing colors are bright, like those of expensive "lasers", and a solid ink printer can print on any paper - even newsprint or cardboard, if only the sheet bends under the drum. And because of the low temperature of the roller and drum, no jams due to adhesion of material to the shafts - the eternal disease of "laser workers"! - it can't be.

Fact number 2. About 90% of solid household waste in Russia is not destroyed, but buried. Every year, about 40 million tons of solid household waste are generated in the country, and almost all of this volume is disposed of at solid waste landfills, authorized and unauthorized dumps. Against this background, the use of solid ink printers with their minimal use of consumables is a significant contribution to the environmental situation in the country and the world.

Nevertheless, there is still waste in the printer, albeit 30 times less than that of a laser competitor. The fact is that when the printer is turned off, the melted ink that entered the head solidifies again. And they cannot withstand repeated melting - the consistency and color change; you have to "drain" what has already been melted and solidified. This process takes a lot of time - starting the printer from an idle state can take up to 5-10 minutes, so it is recommended to unplug it from the outlet as rarely as possible. This is not difficult to do in the office, but it is not always convenient at home, and with small volumes of printing once a week, it does not make sense at all. The second point is ink durability. Although the solid ink printer has adopted the printing speed from the "laser", and you cannot wash prints with water, their mechanical strength is rather low. Simply put, an imprint can be scraped off or broken with a strong crease - you can't do that with a "laser".

Fact number 3... Solid ink won't smudge like candle wax, for example. This distinguishes solid ink technology from toner cartridges.

All these factors allow solid ink printers to ideally fit into almost any niche where fast and high-quality printing is needed at a minimum of costs and consumables. For example, it is difficult to come up with something better to work with documents, graphs and tables, so the technology has found wide application in business, in offices, on stock exchanges, in enterprises and in general among users who print a lot of documentation. Today, solid ink is Xerox know-how. The company is constantly improving its technology, gradually conquering an ever larger segment of office printing. The technology is also used by the latest models of the company's MFPs - Xerox ColorQube 8580/8880 and ColorQube 8900. Solid ink printing is not a technology of the future in the sense that it is actively used in the present. But the segment of its use is naturally growing, because useful inventions cannot remain in the shadows for a long time.

Advantages of solid ink technology

Low equipment wear, durability and reliability;
- ease of replacement and low cost of consumables;
- almost complete absence of waste;
- high printing speed;
- resistance of prints to blur;
- the ability to print on a wide range of materials.

Disadvantages of solid ink technology

Fragility of prints to physical impact and high temperatures;
- long startup duration after disconnection from the network;
- disposal of frozen ink after disconnecting from the network.

sources

Solid ink printing technology was invented in 1986 by Tektronix, primarily for the needs of publishing and printing industries. Launched in 1991, the company's first solid ink printer, the Phaser III, cost about $ 10,000 and was primarily intended for printing proofs. Further improvement of technology has allowed to improve the quality of printing and bring the price of printers to values \u200b\u200bthat are acceptable for conventional office printing. Since the acquisition of the Tektronix printer division in 2000 by Xerox, this business continues to grow. It is important that, unlike laser, solid ink technology was initially focused on color, not black and white printing. In fact, it is closer to an inkjet, but with laser and even offset elements: the drops of molten dyes ejected from the nozzles of the heads do not fall directly onto the paper, but first onto a heated metal drum, from which they are already transferred to the paper, where they freeze. Thanks to this, on the one hand, the high printing speed characteristic of laser printers is achieved, and on the other hand, the image output quality is close to offset printing.

Operating principle

"Ink" in its original state is a small block of a wax-like composition mixed with a dye of one of the four main printing colors - cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). Note that the colors of the bars are not very similar to those that are obtained after melting them - for example, the "blue" bar looks dark blue (almost black), and the "purple" - dark brown. A bar of each color has a unique (distinguishing it not only from the bars of other colors, but also from the bars for other models of solid ink printers) bizarre shape, corresponding to the shape of the hole in the compartment of the ink container intended for it. This "form coding" almost completely eliminates the possibility of error when refilling the printer with ink. Each compartment is "charged" with up to four bars, and you can add them at any time, including during printing. When the lid of the container is closed, the bars are pressed by springs so that the head bar in each compartment is firmly pressed against the ceramic melting plate.

The ink melted by the hot plates flows into the heated reservoirs of the print head, where it is kept in a molten state. After filling a tank of a certain color, the corresponding melting plate is switched off. As the ink is consumed, the plates turn on, maintaining the required level of dyes in the head reservoirs.

The stainless steel piezo inkjet head has 1236 nozzles and, unlike inkjet heads, covers the entire width of the printed page. Achievable in modern models of solid ink printers, the resolution of 2400 dpi is provided by a small (at the distance between adjacent nozzles) horizontal movement of the head. The piezoelectric nozzles are capable of ejecting up to 30 million drops per second. Thanks to this design, a much higher print speed is achieved than that of inkjet printers (up to 30 ppm).

Drops of dyes ejected by the head fall on a rotating stainless steel drum heated to a temperature lower than the head, on which a thin layer of silicone oil is previously applied using a special roller included in the maintenance kit. On the drum, the colorants change from a liquid to an intermediate elastic state.

When about a third of the page image is formed on the drum, a sheet of paper (or other media) is fed from the lower cassette or multipurpose front tray. Having passed through the heater slot, the heated sheet is pressed against the drum by the transfer roller, and the colorants, which adhere better to the paper than to the oiled smooth drum, transfer to the sheet, where they finally solidify. The scraper included in the maintenance kit cleans the drum of dirt and remaining drops of colorants, after which the process is repeated.

As you can see, the printing technology is practically waste-free. However, the picture shows a node that has not been mentioned yet - a waste tray. Where do they come from? Waste occurs when the printer is ready to operate from a cold (i.e., completely off) state. One of the stages of this long (up to 15 minutes) process is vacuum cleaning of the head nozzles, in which part of the melted ink is drained into a waste container and solidifies there. That is why it is recommended that you never turn off the solid ink printer. With frequent shutdowns, a quite noticeable part of the dyes can go to waste, so in the case of an unstable power supply, you should consider purchasing a separate UPS for the printer.

The printer controller (in the latest Xerox models it is based on the 600 MHz PowerPC RISC processor) provides rasterization of images (the main page description language is PostScript 3, it is also possible to emulate the PCL5c language) and control the print engine. The control panel, printer driver and PC communication interfaces differ little from the laser models.

Benefits

A solid ink printer has a number of undeniable advantages over a color laser printer. As already mentioned, they are largely due to the fact that solid ink technology was originally developed with an eye to color printing, while a color laser printer is actually four monochrome in one case.

The main advantage of a solid ink printer is a much simpler design, incomparably fewer mechanical, optical and electronic components, and therefore higher reliability. It has neither a precision optical-mechanical system for scanning the laser beam, nor photoreceptors, nor blocks for developing and thermal fixing the image. While it is almost impossible to find a laser printer (even a monochrome one) that has served its entire service life with a nominal load and has never been repaired, then for a solid ink printer, subject to proper operation, such a situation is quite real.

The second most important advantage is the much fewer consumables and the ease of adding and replacing them. There are only two such materials - ink sticks and a maintenance kit. The ink is in a solid state, does not stain hands and clothes, it is very easy to add - even a child can do it. Solid ink technology is also unique in the sense that dyes can be added without interrupting the printing process. Replacing the maintenance kit is also a simple operation, taking less than a minute.

The third, also important, advantage is a stable print quality that does not change over time and does not depend on the number of pages printed on the printer. In almost all color laser printers, the print quality deteriorates as the drum, transfer rollers, and other parts wear out.

When it comes to print quality, you can note the vibrant, vibrant colors that only high-end color laser printers can boast, which cost several times the size of solid ink, or inkjet models when printing on specially coated paper. The advantage of a solid ink printer over the latter is the absence of ink spreading for any type of paper, up to newsprint. The "banding" characteristic of many laser (and some inkjet) printers is completely absent. The prints are waterproof.

Not the least important is the high print speed (up to 30 ppm), which is characteristic only of much more expensive models of color laser printers, while the cost of a solid ink printer is close to the cost of a monochrome network laser printer of similar performance. Such a short time to the first page - 5 s - a record value not only for color, but also for monochrome laser models.

Laser printers typically have two sheets of paper in the paper path at the same time to achieve maximum print speed, causing most paper jam problems. In a solid ink printer, the next sheet is always fed only after the previous sheet has been completely ejected. With a simpler paper path, solid ink printers can print on heavier media than most lasers - up to 220 gsm. They have no problems printing on a wide variety of media - recycled paper, envelopes, transparencies, media that are not uniform in thickness and type of media (for example, envelopes with a transparent window). Because the toner is not fused, solid ink can be used with media that are more sensitive to heat than laser.

Finally, last but not least for those concerned with the environment, the benefit is 90% less waste than laser printers. For clarity, you can give the following figures: after printing 100 thousand sheets on a color laser printer of a similar class HP LaserJet 4700, 71 kg of waste is generated, while on a solid ink Xerox Phaser 8560 - only 2 kg.

disadvantages

As often happens, the disadvantages of solid ink printing technology are the flip side of its advantages. First of all, they are due to the fact that the ink is in a solid state at room temperature, and the constant readiness of the printer for printing requires keeping it melted.

The biggest drawback - a very long cold start compared to other types of printers (in the first Tektronix samples, the initial start-up time reached 45 minutes, in modern models it was reduced to 12-15 minutes) - it will not be very noticeable if you never turn off printer from the network. At the same time, the second drawback is leveled - a significant consumption of ink for the initial start-up.

Even if the printer does not turn off completely, but is in an energy-saving state (note that this concept itself for solid ink printers has a slightly different meaning than for laser printers - if for the latter the consumption in this mode is usually less than 20-40 W, then for the former it is more 200 W), the time of its preparation for work after the arrival of a print job is 4–5 minutes. It is clear that in most office applications such a delay is unacceptable, so special methods are used to ensure that the printer is always ready - automatic switching on and off according to a schedule and even automatically monitoring the "printing" behavior of employees and turning on the printer shortly before periods of activity (by switching on and off here means transfer to active and energy-saving modes, respectively).

Now about the prints. Their main disadvantage is low mechanical strength (solid color fillings are easily scratched with a fingernail). The obvious way to protect important documents is lamination, but here, too, pitfalls lie in wait - because of the heat in the laminator, thin lines and small fonts are slightly blurred. Another disadvantage is associated with the lack of mixing and spreading of ink on the paper and the low density of nozzles in the head. As a result, in the light areas of photographic images, there is a noticeable "dots" visible to the naked eye. This drawback makes it practically impossible to use the printer for high-quality printing of photos. His element is text and business graphics with not too thin lines and solid color fills.

Economic indicators

As you know, the most important technical and economic indicator of a printer for medium-sized workgroups (namely, solid ink models from Xerox belong to this category) is the total cost of ownership (TCO), calculated taking into account all costs for the life of the printer.

Let's try to roughly calculate this figure for laser and solid ink printers with similar productivity and maximum monthly load - Xerox Phaser 6360DN and Xerox Phaser 8560DN. At the same time, we will not take into account the costs of repair and maintenance of devices, which, taking into account the above, will play into the hands of a laser printer. We will not take into account the cost of electricity - here the solid ink unit already wins. We will proceed from a realistic estimate for printers of this class of the average number of printed color pages over the entire service life (with 5% coverage in each of the four colors) - 300 thousand. The amount of consumables of each type was calculated by dividing this figure by the manufacturer's declared resource of the corresponding material with rounding up.

As you can see, in terms of the total cost of ownership, a solid ink printer even surpasses a laser one. An additional economic benefit of a solid ink printer is less downtime due to repairs and lower maintenance and repair costs.

The most famous printers are inkjet and laser devices. Matrix varieties were also used earlier. Technology does not stand still. Today, a number of modern technologies have appeared that significantly surpass the familiar and familiar to all devices.

This is a solid ink printer. What kind of device it is, what advantages and disadvantages it has, should be considered in more detail. This will allow you to make the right decision about the advisability of purchasing such a device.

The emergence of technology

The solid ink printer (photo below) is a development of the last century. In 1986, such developments were first used by Tektronix. The new technology was used in printing and publishing.

This printer became available to consumers in 1991. It was released by Phaser III. The cost of the model was high. Not every buyer could afford such a technique. The price was about 10 thousand dollars. Therefore, printing enterprises began to acquire such equipment. They used it to create proofs.

In the future, technologies have improved. Relatively inexpensive solid ink printers are on sale. This technology was originally developed for It combines the advantages of inkjet and laser printing. Today, this technology has not yet received proper distribution. However, it is gradually gaining popularity, including in Russia.

Device and general principle of operation

The device of a solid ink printer is quite simple. This reduces the likelihood of breakage. The structure consists of a drum, controller and printhead. In contrast, laser varieties have many details. Breakdowns due to the complexity of the device are more frequent. The simpler the design, the less likely it is to fail.

The molten dyes fly out in the form of drops, first falling onto a heated metal drum. Only then do the special pigments get onto the paper. After that, the paint hardens quickly.

This technology allows for high print speeds. At the same time, the image quality is high. It is close to offset technology. A feature of solid ink printers is that they are not demanding on paper. The medium can be paper, cardboard, film, envelope, etc. This distinguishes the device favorably from laser and inkjet printers.

Dyes

The technology and design of a solid ink printer involves the use of special dyes. They are made in the form of small bars. They contain wax, essential oils and special pigments. In this case, the bars can be of 4 colors. Their combination allows you to get any shade.

Wax-like bars can be blue, yellow, purple or black. Moreover, their initial tone is significantly different from the pure print obtained on paper. So, for example, a dark blue bar, after melting by the system and applying drops on paper, gives a blue color. A purple tone on paper is obtained by melting a dark brown wax-like mass.

Bars for printers from different manufacturers differ in shape. Therefore, they cannot be confused. Up to 4 bars can be placed in one color container. You can add them at any convenient time. Even while printing, you can add "ink" to the printer. It is important to monitor the tightness of the bars. The head block must be pressed against a ceramic plate, which melts it to a liquid state.

Media creation process

The printing process of a solid ink printer is characterized by a number of unique features. Waste-free production is called its action. The wax-based plates melt and drain into a heated reservoir. This keeps the ink liquid in the print head.

In the process of ink consumption, the plate turns on, melting the bars. When the tank is full, heating stops. In this case, the required temperature is maintained only in the head reservoir. It has 1236 holes that spray ink in a specific sequence. The nozzles then open and close.

With this technology, it is possible to obtain a resolution of up to 2400 dpi. This provides a slight horizontal movement of the head. The printer can eject up to 30 million ink drops per second. This enables fast printing.

The drum receiving colorants is less hot than the head containers. A silicone-based oil layer is applied to it before printing. The ink becomes viscous as the temperature drops. About 1/3 of the sheet image is formed on the drum. The device then feeds the sheet onto which the ink is transferred. Here the dye completely solidifies. Then the process is repeated.

Waste-free production

The technology of the presented printing is called practically waste-free. Solid ink printers have one more unit. It is called a waste bin. This is a mandatory node for all devices of this type.

It can be called wasteless only if the printer is constantly printing without turning off. This process is only possible in a large print shop. In most cases, waste still appears.

When the printer is turned off, heating stops. All ink freezes. When the user wants to resume the printing process again, the system will carry out special preparation of the device. Within 15 min. the nozzles are vacuum cleaned. Some of the ink is melted and drained into the waste tray. Here the mass freezes. You can simply not unplug the printer. In this state, some of the ink will always be liquid. Otherwise, the consumption of materials can be significant.

Benefits

The solid ink printer, the printing technology of which has a lot of advantages, is used today by various printing companies. This direction is intended exclusively for color printing. In this case, this technology has many advantages over other types of printers.

Experts call the main advantage of solid ink devices simplicity of design. This increases their reliability and image quality. The printer almost never breaks down before the manufacturer's date.

Also, such designs are easy to maintain. Much less ink is required for printing. The ink bars will not stain your hands. They are easy to fill in the appropriate compartments. Even a child can cope with this task. A maintenance kit is also supplied with the printer. It needs to be changed periodically. This procedure also takes little time.

Positive customer reviews

Solid ink printing technology has been highly appreciated by industry professionals and customers. They note the high reliability and functionality of the devices. Buyers claim that the print quality of these devices is very high. It does not change during the operation of the device. This compares favorably with solid-print models from laser, inkjet printers.

The colors are vivid and the print quality is comparable to the images produced by the most expensive laser products. Regardless of the type of paper, ink will not run. This expands the scope of the presented devices. The image is uniform, there are no stripes or other defects.

Also, buyers note a high device per minute produces up to 30 pages. Only expensive models of laser printers can boast of such results.

Positive feedback from specialists

Considering the reviews of solid ink printers that are left by specialists, many positive statements can be noted. They note that the printing speed is not only high, but also correctly designed. So, in laser printers, the printing speed is ensured by the presence of 2 sheets in the path at once. This often causes page jam problems. On solid ink models, the next sheet is not fed into the path until the previous page has been completely printed. At the same time, the speed remains high.

Experts note the possibility of printing on various media. You can use both light and heavy paper, transparencies, and other media that cannot tolerate high temperatures. The paint is applied to the surface in a warm state. This temperature is incapable of harming the polymer films.

These devices have 90% less material consumption than laser designs. This has a positive effect on the environment and economic performance of the printer.

Disadvantages of solid ink devices

The solid ink color printer also has some disadvantages. The technology does not allow frequent switching off of the device. The ink must be kept liquid. Otherwise, preparation for printing takes a lot of time. Therefore, it is recommended to always leave the printer plugged in. In this case, a certain amount of electricity will be spent on heating. This raises utility bills.

It should also be said that after the printer receives a print job, it takes another 4-5 minutes to complete the procedure. In some cases, this feature is unacceptable.

Negative customer reviews

A solid ink color printer, according to experts and buyers, has several disadvantages. The main one is the appearance of the images. The ink does not mix, does not flow directly onto the paper. In this case, a small number of nozzles are provided in the head. Especially in bright areas, you can see the dot structure of the images.

This feature does not allow using the printer to print photos. Therefore, a high-quality result can be observed only when printing fonts and graphics. Also, the image fills must be solid. The drawing should also not contain thin lines.

In contact with

Classmates

Solid ink for printer Are solid-state dyes used in inkjet printing.

Solid ink was developed in 1986 by Tektronix, and in 2000 the rights to all solid ink developments were acquired by Xerox. Solid ink is currently used in Xerox product lines such as Phaser and ColorQube.

After the user sends a print job, some of the ink briquettes melt and go from solid to liquid. The melted ink flows into the print head of the printer, then onto a rotating drum covered with silicone grease, and from there onto a heated sheet of paper. The image is transferred in one pass, so printers with solid ink prints very quickly.

Some authors classify solid ink as a type of sublimation ink, but this is fundamentally wrong. Sublimation ink for a printer in the printing process passes from a liquid state to a solid and then to a gaseous state, and solid ink from a solid to a liquid state, and in this form is applied to paper.

The transition of solid and sublimation ink and one state to another

Solid ink briquettes are available in standard CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).

Xerox Solid Ink Standard CMYK Color

The table shows the most common Xerox solid ink configurations.

Xerox Solid Ink Packaging Options

Xerox ink bars are available in a variety of cross-sections and serial numbers from "1" to "4", allowing users to accurately determine the sequence of their installation in the printer. The top of the cartridge is marked with a ““ ”arrow.

Xerox Solid Ink Bars are uniquely shaped and labeled for easy installation into the printer

A significant advantage of solid ink over liquid ink and toner is the fact that they can be loaded into the printer directly during printing.

Considering that the composition of solid ink contains polymer additives and wax, they are perfectly fixed on almost all types of media, including fabrics made of coarse fibers.

Solid ink prints are comparable in contrast and brightness to prints made with oil or water-based inks, and only slightly inferior in durability to pigment inks. They are absolutely resistant to moisture, but will fade when exposed to direct sunlight. Therefore, when used in an open environment, such images should be laminated with a special film. Regular film will not protect solid ink prints from fading, and they will very soon lose their brightness and attractiveness in the sun. Consider this feature of solid ink when printing materials intended for outdoor use, such as street advertising.

The picture below compares two solid ink prints that have been hung in the open sun for 4 weeks. The print shown on the left side of the figure was protected with a special laminate, and the print shown on the right side was protected with regular laminate.

Comparison of solid ink prints coated with special (left) and conventional (right) laminate

Lamination of solid ink prints with a special film allows them to extend their life cycle.

The advantages and disadvantages of solid ink are listed in the table.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Solid Ink

Benefits of solid ink	Disadvantages of solid ink
bright, rich colors and excellent print quality; safety of use; environmental friendliness; lightweight installation of briquettes; compact design; print speed; cheap prints compared to color toner	it takes time to warm up; sensitivity to ultraviolet rays; increased consumption of electricity; create an imperceptible relief on the carrier; best used for large print volumes

Solid ink for a printer is capable of applying high-quality images to any surface, including paper of various densities, cardboard, film, and fabrics. The wax, which is part of the solid ink, gives them a gloss, provides brightness and saturation of prints, uniformity of filling. Ink bars do not melt in the hand, do not spray in the air like dry toner, and do not run like liquid ink. They are safe for the environment and human health, as they are made from plant materials and oils.

 

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