Tue Feb 3, 4:22 PM ET
Mike Martin, science.newsfactor.com
Beleaguered by major accounting problems less than two years ago, Xerox (NYSE: XRX - news) is attempting to build up steam, touting a group of new offerings unveiled late last week as "industry innovations."
Five new printing and imaging systems, ranging from US$979 to $99,000, "fundamentally change the competitive dynamics of today's markets," says Anne Mulcahy, Xerox chairperson and CEO. The new platforms will result in "faster product development cycles and lower manufacturing costs," she said in an address to customers at Xerox headquarters last week.
The latest offerings represent "the results of Xerox's commitment to innovation and a global portfolio of 45,000 patents," Ursula Burns, president of the Xerox business operations group, told NewsFactor.
Among the developments: a new generation of DocuTech printers, which are capable of producing up to 700,000 pages per month on a consistent basis, according to Tom Bitter, Xerox engineering platform manager.
"They were designed for manufacturability and customer needs, with 40 percent fewer moving parts than existing digital-production printers," Bitter told NewsFactor.
DocuTech is, "in many respects, a revolutionary product, bringing a new quality and price-performance level to quick and commercial print shops, in-plant operations and large offices," says Barb Pellow, Gannett professor of printing and publishing at Rochester Institute of Technology.
R & D vs. R & B
Research and development with great rhythm and few blues helped bear "the fruit of a $400 million effort that produced some 300 patents," Xerox spokesperson Bill McKee told NewsFactor.
He highlighted the latest DocuTech innovations:
>Solid-state image sensors that capture 360,000 images per square inch;
>Proprietary digital-image processing chips performing as the equivalent of 100 Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news) Pentium 4 processors running at 2.0 GHz;
>Innovative use of air to feed paper; and
>Paper acceleration and deceleration tantamount to a car braking from 70 mph to zero in one second.
"We start taking orders February 1st with initial installations beginning in March," McKee said.
Beam Up the Xerox Phaser
Joining DocuTech on the innovation stage is the Phaser 8400, an office color printer with solid ink that runs at an unprecedented 24 pages per minute, according to McKee, and is priced at less than $1,000.
"The Phaser 8400 is the first of a family of color printers built around new solid-ink architecture. Innovations in print-head design result in smaller, more uniform ink-drop size," he said.
"The redesign shaved 25 percent off the printer's weight and cut the number of parts from about 600 to a dozen sub-assemblies," McKee noted, adding that it produces 97 percent less waste.
The Phaser 8400 starts at $999 and is available immediately.
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