Hi. This is Andy Tribute. I'm still at Drupa. And it's interesting when you look around and you're looking at the different products you get some different views on things and I haven't necessarily always been complimentary about some of the products out there. And in fact I wasn't very complimentary recently in something I wrote about Xerox who I think have somewhat lost their way. But one of the key products that Xerox is showing is the C-Press 500 Inkjet press. And this is the unusual one that it's not water-based ink; it's solid ink. And the quality is not the best of the qualities that you see on these presses, but I was pretty well surprised when I went around to look at this the other day and they gave me this sample. This is very interesting because it's inkjet on a 39 GSM paper. 39 GSM, I'm not sure how that translates into pound weight, etc. is very lightweight paper. This is a standard lightweight, lightly coated paper. And if you put that with water based inkjet the paper would just dissolve. And you look at this there is no show-through or very little show-through. The quality is pretty good and you look at this and think with postage costs going up as they are if you can reduce your paper weight down and get really lightweight publications that you're sending out on direct mail, this is a killer app for the Xerox side press. Very, very impressive piece of technology.
However, let me just make a negative comment and it's nothing about the side press but it's Xerox. They have a wonderful sample that they're producing and it's showing the side press doing a transactional document. And this transactional document is an electricity bill from your utility supplier. And on it there is a big area that says "click on here to sign up for online billing, don't waste a tree." They're trying to sell a paper press and they're telling you don't use paper based billing. What a wonderful piece of advertising. But anyway this shows the potential of what that press can do. I think that is a pretty hot app. Thanks very much indeed. I'm going to be finishing at Drupa now but I'm I should be writing a lot of stuff post-Drupa about some of the things here. But it's been a great Drupa, very interesting indeed and there's a lot more to come.
Discussion
By Henry Freedman on May 15, 2012
So if you put wax on thin paper does it not become thicker paper? Xerox has very heavy ink-film thickness. Most important question is with 60% page area coverage on 10,000 feet 4/color what does the ink cost/weigh?
By Gerard Kruijt on May 16, 2012
So, if you put toner on paper, does it get thicker? Probably a few microns, as is the same for Solid Ink (not wax). As to costs; take a look at the current solid-ink MFP's, the price per page is considerable lower than toner, and you don't waste packaging, cartridges or technical ink-delivery systems and containers. And because it is solid, it has a very intense color that is not influenced by the structure of paper. So you can use recycled paper or even toilet paper if you need to. There are some real advantages in the physics between paper and non-solvent/water based ink that needs to dry and gets into the paperfibers which influences how the color is perceived. From my own experience I can say that solid ink is extremely relaible, low-cost and maintenance free, easy to fill and perfect color-stable on all kind of substrates.
By Henry Freedman on May 24, 2012
So if you print 10,000 ft using waxed inks with 60% coverage what does it cost and weigh? If you anwser that question you will see my point.
Waxed ink much more expensive and image quality does not even start to compare with toner. How
many people have wax based CF inkjet presses?
What speed does press run at? These answers
prove my point here. Andy above struggled to find
something nice to say here. Let the market decide.
Discussion
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