WEEKEND MFP INDUSTRY NOTES
5-10-09
The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.
Xerox launched the world’s first A3 color wax MFP, the ColorQube 9200 series. Details:
- Advertised as offering full color pages at 85ppm for $23,500
- Called “Solid Ink” technology, it was first developed by Tektronix Corp. of Wilsonville, Oregon, in 1991, in its original Phaser 300 and 500 series of desktop A4 color printers.
- Xerox bought Tektronix’s color printer division in 2001 for $925 million
- Uses 4 colors of wax chunks (cyan, magenta, yellow & black), which are placed into holes
in the top of the unit.
- Each color is a different shape, so you can not put the wrong color in the wrong hole, similar to the Fisher-Price Mailbox toy.
- The machine can hold enough wax to generate up to 58,000 pages based on 5% fill per color
per letter size page.
- The wax chunks/crayons, each fall into their own cast iron bathtub, where an internal heater warms up the tubs until the wax melts into a liquid state
- The hot, liquid wax is then sprayed onto a large metal drum
- The metal drum then rolls over the sheet of paper applying the 4 color image
- The wax cools and solidifies before the paper exits the machine
- If the machine is bumped while the wax is hot, the wax can splash out of its cast iron tubs inside the machine, causing damage. Therefore, machine must be unplugged, and allowed to cool down
before it is moved. This is also true if technician is going to service the device.
- The machine must stay on all the time. While it does have a lower power mode, it must still generate heat to keep the wax liquid, otherwise if it hardens, the machine must purge itself of the hardened wax. This purging can use up most of the wax loaded into the unit. This purging is also done during the units cleaning mode, and puts unused wax into an end user replaceable cleaning cartridge, and this is not reusable.
- From a cold start, the machine has a very long warm up time, up to 20 minutes
- As the unit keeps generating heat all the time, it most likely will not earn the federal government’s Energy Star certification as it still uses 360 watts in standby mode
- When warm, and not in lower power mode, its first copy out time is 7.2 seconds
- From sleep mode, it takes 3 and ½ minutes to warmup
- Unit uses wax spray print heads with 900 nozzles per head, with each nozzle is only 37.5 microns wide
- Xerox spent 5 years and $24 million to build plant to make the wax for this unit.
- Xerox claims that in 4 years the unit will produce only 88lbs. of packaging waste versus the average color laser MFP which supposedly generates 815lbs. of waste. Since most packaging and cartridges used by color laser printers are recyclable, this is very misleading.
- Xerox claims that it will save a customer up to 62% over using a traditional color laser MFP
- Image quality is advertised as offering 600x600dpi, but high quality only achieved when engine slows way down and does not offer true 8 bits per pixel.
- Since the device uses wax, instead of toner, the output can have a waxy look and feel which may be less than desirable. In addition, there is the risk that the wax could re-melt and cause pages to stick together, for example, if the pages were left on the dashboard of an automobile.
- The waxy pages may also stick together if too much pressure is applies, perhaps in a large ring binder.
- Pages that come in contact with the vinyl cover of a folder or ring binder may also stick to the surface as well due to the waxy image.
- Image is not permanent any may smear (in a review of the Phaser 8400, PC World magazine said; “gave the printers a Poor rating as the waxy, solid ink scratches off more easily than does plastic toner fused to paper”
- May have trouble getting waxy pages to run through the document feeder of a copier/MFP
- The waxy pages may also cause difficulty with mailing, handling, archiving, recycling or writing
notes on pages
Xerox ColorQube details continued:
- Xerox apparently offers a service/supply contract with three different click rates:
- “Black Plus Useful Color” which is 1 cent per page, and allows a very small amount of color
- “Everyday Color”, is 3 cents per click, is for low quality color, with a moderate use of color, but no photos
- “Expressive Color” is 8 cents per click, is for high quality color with photos
- Hewlett Packard launched a similar plan when it unveiled the Edgeline color inkjet copier, with very limited success.
- While advertised as offering 85ppm, actual speeds may be much slower: - Model 9201 slows down to 30ppm when producing high quality prints/copies
- Model 9202 slows down to 35ppm when producing high quality prints/copies
- Model 9203 slows down to 38ppm when producing high quality prints/copies
- the slow down occurs for b/w or color high quality which is defined as 600x600dpi.
- the high speed low quality mode is only 225dpi
- 100 sheet document feeder with top scan speed of 51opm for color and 75opm for b/w
- Up to 300K/month maximum duty cycle
- Xerox claims that this device has one third the moving parts of a traditional color laser MFP, and therefore should require less service.
- Full color touch screen LCD display control panel on top (not on armature)
- Comes standard with two 550 sheet paper drawers that holds up to 11”x17” paper
- Comes standard with tandem letter size paper drawer that holds up to 2100 sheets
- Comes standard with 100 sheet stack bypass that can hold up to 12”x18”
- Optional LCT holds up to 4,000 sheets
- Maximum paper weight is 220gsm/80lb. cover (can not handle 10pt. postcards)
- Optional fax board
- Built-in print controller features:
- 1GHz processor
- 1GB RAM for copier memory
- 512MB RAM printer memory
- 80GB hard drive for spooling
- PCL and PostScript printer drivers
- Scan to SMB, FTP, e-mail, LDAP
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports
- Actual maker unknown
- Xerox EIP for embedded applications
- No color calibration, as there is no EFI Fiery option
- Finishing options include:
- 100 sheet stapling
- z-fold, c-fold
- post process inserter
- booklet making of 15 sheets maximum
- hole-punching
- Submits meter reads automatically with optional Xerox Smart eSoluitions MeterAssistant
- Optional ID card swipe reader for authentication
Xerox announced it sold notes to raise $750 million in cash
Xerox announced the “Color Unleashed” road show to demonstrate the ColorQube to prospective customers:
- Washington, DC on 5/7/09
- Chicago, IL on 5/7/09
- Houston, TX on 5/7/09
- Bloomington, IL on 5/13/09
- Phoenix, AZ on 5/14/09
- Dallas, TX on 5/14/09
- Philadelphia, PA on 5/14/09
- Los Angeles, CA on 5/15/09
- Universal City, CA on 5/19/09
Xerox announced that 300 workers at its Webster, NY campus will be forced to take 6 weeks off.
Xerox announced it has promoted Paul Schulman to President and COO of Global Imaging, reporting to Michael Shea, who is Global’s CEO.
Xerox ended a contract it had with a print-for-pay franchise company in England after the franchise owners found out about kickbacks back to the corp. office. On Demand Communications (ODC) had a preferred supplier contract with Xerox for its Kall Kwik and Prontaprint franchisees, however, apparently ODC never informed its store owners that rebates were going to ODC when the stores acquired Xerox equipment.
Canon, in an effort to make up for loss of distribution through IKON and DANKA, announced it has signed up 11 new dealers in the U.S. Up to 75 more could be added in the next couple of years. Unlike some other manufacturers, with Canon this is a very slow and tedious process.
Canon announced that it has won the “MFP Line of the Year” award for 2008 from Buyers Labs Inc.
Canon announced it sold an imagePRESS C6000 and a C6000VP to a Minuteman Press print shop in Cambridge, MA.
Canon Europe hired Orange Business Services of France to operate its customer call center in Europe.
Toshiba announced that it will hold two regional dealer meetings instead of one large event:
- July 14-16, 2009 at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas
- July 27-29, 2009 at Hyatt Regency in Jersey City
Toshiba Corp. announced that during last quarter the company lost 184 billion in yen, and did not expect to show a profit this year. It also stated plans to buy a 52% stake in Nuclear Fuel Enterprises of Japan, to expand it nuclear plant division.
Sharp launched three new b/w laser MFPs, the MX-M363N, MX-M453N & MX-M503N featuring:
- Has same cosmetic look as the Sharp “Frontier Series”
- A3 designs, up to 11”x17”
- 36, 45 & 50ppm top speeds
- Optional fax board
- Uses pulverized micro-fine toner
- Auto duplex standard
- 8.5” full color touchscreen LCD control panel
- retractable keyboards
- 35ppm scan speed
- 600x600dpi copy
- 600x600dpi scan
- 1200x1200dpi print
- Maximum paper supply of 5600 sheets with options
- 100 sheet document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time
- While unit only outputs in b/w, it can also scan in color
- Optional internal stapling finisher
- Built-in print/scan controller standard
- 800MHz processor
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports
- 512MB RAM
- 80GB hard drive
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- OSA technology which allows embedded applications
IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced a new product from EFI, called DocSend Server featuring:
- The original IKON DocSend, is a relabeled version of the EFI SendMe, a competitor of eCopy ScanStation, that is an external device which stands next to an MFP for touch screen
scanning functionality.
- DocSend Server instead uses an embedded application in the Ricoh MFP’s control panel, coupled with an application loaded on to the customer’s server.
- Includes OCR for file conversion to readable PDF, MS Word or MS Excel files.
- Pricing not announced
Ricoh makes a big change at its InfoPrint division, which was acquired from IBM. Out is Tony Romero, in is Ricoh Japan executive, Daisuke Segawa as CEO and President.
Cenveo Corp. of Connecticut, distributor of graphic arts supplies, announced it is purchasing Nashua Corp. of New Hampshire for $44.4 million. At one time, Nashua made generic toner and other consumables that fit Ricoh copiers. As part of a settlement of a lawsuit with Ricoh in 2006, the company left the toner business and focused on supplies and paper for wide format printers.
Seneca Data, a distributor and repair center for Okidata printers, has purchased one of its competitors. It has acquired Agson, Inc.,, which does the same for Lexmark, HP and Citizen printers.
Kyocera announced that it has partnered with three leasing company to offer its dealers a unified leasing program:
- GE Capital
- GreatAmerica
- Wells Fargo
Hewlett Packard conducted an open house to show its beta install of its HP Inket Web Press. The test install is at O’Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles, CA. Details:
- Will ship commercially in late 2009 or early 2010
- 1200x600dpi
- Top speed of 400 feet per minute using rolls of paper
- Uses printhead technology found in the Edgeline MFP
- Two others have asked for beta installs, Courier Corp. and Consolidated Graphics
- 30” wide paper handling
- Uses HP Exstream print server software
A British managed print services company announced plans to open office in the U.S. NewField IT will open office in Clearwater, FL and will be run by Ed Mostellar, VP. He was hired from Lexmark.
Microsoft, which is getting ready to launch its new operating system, Windows 7, has already been hit with anti-trust lawsuits from some of its competitors in the web browsing category.
Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, announced that he would not resign from the board of Apple Computer despite a probe launched by the FTC into whether involvement in both tech companies violates federal antitrust law.
Marvell, maker of generic print controllers, is suing a competitor as it claims the company gained trade secrets when it taped a voice mail inadvertently left by a Marvell lawyer who forgot to hangup his speakerphone.
DocuWare, maker of document management software, announced:
- recorded its 20th year in business
- installed 845 licenses in 2007
- installed 1011 licenses in 2008
- growth rate of 20%
- total revenue of 11.5 million Euro
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