Art has an excellent break down of the Xerox color Cube. And he has a nice "10 Commandments" post.
I am re-posting here. If you are not part of Art's 2,000 world-wide membership, go here and become one.
Xerox launched the world’s first A3 color wax MFP, the ColorQube 9200 series formerly codenamed Jupiter.
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.
This feed was supplied to me by a p4photel remember, do your research and collaborate on all of this information. There's an old saying "believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see"
-=Good Selling=-
If any of the above details are incorrect, I suspect your comments will enlighten me.
If you're looking for information about managed print services, come on over to Walters & Shutwell.
**** UPDATE ****
- It has been suggested that the ColorCube does not need to be on continously and that it possess a feature called "Intelligent Ready" and learns when to turn itself on in the morning.
- The unit is 2009 Energy Star Certified.
- The melting temperature of the wax is the same as the boiling point of water. So unless you are in the practice of holding your prints over your oven, I wouldn't be too worried about it.
- Pages printed on a Color Cube will pass through any mfp on the market today.
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