By Cheryl Otstott, Xerox
Xerox solid ink, let’s take a look at these big crayons. That is what they are big blocks of resin-based non-toxic color that are melted in the printer and affixed to the paper through heat and pressure. They create a great image. Printers that use solid ink require no special paper and the prints do not curl or wrinkle like other color laser or inkjet printers.
The technology has been around since 1991, the last century!! But in the recent past the technology and the ink formulas have been refined. The solid ink generates 90% less waste than comparable color laser printers. So let’s take a look at a classic video on how the ink gets to the paper.
Okay so there are no little guys with paintball guns in your printer but there is a precise stainless steel print head with tiny holes smaller than a human hair. It uses 1,236 nozzles jetting more than 30 million drops per second. The ink is jetted from the print head to a heated drum and then is pressed onto the paper. Due to this process less ink wicks into the paper fibers and that controls dot spread, allowing for a crisper looking image. The image on the left below is the magnified image from a Color laser printer, the image on the right is solid ink.
Solid ink is fast, precise, and less expensive. Print speeds can reach 30-85 pages per minute.
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