Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

Talk about your gee-whiz machines! Here’s a description of the Xerox DocuColor 40:

“It’s priced to fit into corporate offices and small service bureaus…based on a Fuji_Xerox engine…yields 400 dpi, toner-based output, a notch down from the 600- to 800-dpi offered by the more expensive short-run digital presses. Business communications are clear candidates for this type of printer-copier.

“Output quality is good enough; the DocuColor 40 has an 8-bit depth (meaning it can place 266 toner intensities at each printer spot), which renders smooth color images and eliminates the need for intensive color screening…40 simplex pages per minute (15 duplex ppm).”

Wowee! This mighty machine, depicted standing on the floor, and taking up the space of, say, a washer and a dryer, costs only $130,000.

This is in an article about production copiers, in “Publish” magazine. It begins by saying, “At the entry level of the short-run digital press market are the high-speed color copier-printers like this one, and the Scitex Spontane, and the Canon CLC 1000.

“In-house corporate print shops and quick-print shops are the likely purchasers or lessees of such units, which are based on dry-toner imaging. At 30 to 40 single-sided (or simplex) letter-size pages per minute, they easily do the job of multiple color copiers for half of what it costs to invest in a short-run digital press.”

I will have to pass on this exciting piece of equipment. I don’t have $130,000 to put into a printer, although a certain customer of my short-run printing service is most anxious for me to print more copies of his book post haste. Even if I had the money, it would be hard to find a DocuColor 40. The article I have been quoting from was in the June 1997 issue of “Publish”!

They don’t make that model anymore, or even the Canon CLC (color laser copier) 1000, which was said to cost $75,000. That’s because faster, higher resolution, slicker color copier-printers are readily available now, and some duplex nicely. These can be had for $130 and up—1/1000 of the price of a DocuColor 17 years ago. Current SOHO (small office/home office) models have 24 or 36-bit depth, better resolution and greater speed.

Color laser printers I have owned are two Konica-Minolta 2400w  Magicolors and one 2500w Magicolor, a Brother MFC 9840CDW and a Dell C1660W.

Konica-Minolta printers, monochrome or color, have excellent definition. They are slow and loud, and buying full sets of toner (four cartridges: black, magenta, cyan and yellow) costs a young fortune. The method of changing toners is tricky, and the little handle on the cartridge likes to break off when the user tries to extract the unit. But when they have toner and healthy imaging drums, these printers live up to the imaging reputation of Konica-Minolta. These printers cost me about $300 each.

The Brother MFC 9840CDW has been a pain the five years I have owned it. The toners have to be placed in a drawer, and become misaligned very easily, The imaging drum becomes defaced and causes spotting and streaks on the prints.

Like many other Brother laser printers, the 9840 CDW lies about amounts of toner remaining in cartridges.

Sensors detect light being beamed from a little window in the other end of the cartridge, and activate the TONER LOW warning. Then before many more copies the message declares that there is no toner in the cartridge. Like “Little Shop of Horrors” flora, such printers howl “Feed me!” in printer error message beeps.

In truth, perhaps a third of the full charge of toner is still present! Blinding the sensor by putting electrical tape across the little window will fool the machine into using the rest of the toner in the cartridge.

Many manufacturers do code part of the specifications into the names of printer models. MFC is Brother’s way of saying multi-function copier, and CDW stands for color, duplex and I am not sure what else. An N in the name would mean network.

Many current printers have W in their name as an indication that they are wireless. That is true of the Dell C1660w, and its C also denotes color.

My Brother MFc-6490CW is a multi-function copier that prints in color and is wide (tabloid-size paper). No D, no automatic duplex. I have to print the second side by turning the sheet over with the top facing toward the front. It’s a pain, but the results look fine.

The Brother DCP-7065DN is a down-and-dirty monochrome laser that is a copier-printer, and scans nicely as the other multifunctions do, but doesn’t fax. Its DN mean that it duplexes and networks.

The 7065 doesn’t cook the polymer beads as well as it should, so some of the toner doesn’t get glued onto the paper, and this produces a slightly gray cast to the output. Also, this machine balks at feeding paper weight above 28 pounds.

My Brother MFCs and the DCP are walk-up copiers as well as printers. That means the user can walk up and lift the lid or use the document feeder and copy one or more documents, without using a computer, the same as we used to do with machines that were just for copying—those old analog Xeroxes and Canons.

Technically, the Dell C1660w I clled a“laser” printer isn’t. It uses LEDs for sensitizing the drum. The resolution is excellent. The fusing process generates quite a lot of heat, and causes paper to curl more than I like. Before I can hand duplex, the paper has to be uncurled, sometimes by being pressed overnight on a hard, flat surface. But the printer can handle card stock, and the price was less than some consumer inkjets. The Dell just prints: it doesn’t fax, scan or copy.

All the color printers I have far out-perform the Xerox DocuColor 40—and that includes the el cheapo MFC-240C inkjet. We have tools for document production that put short-run publishing within reach. Add a thermal binder or a wire binder, and you can produce books!

A thermal binder can “cook” a “perfect bound” book like a paperback. Clamp a “case-bound” hard cover over that, and you have a yearbook. It isn’t rocket science, and the equipment is not very expensive. Something to think about, “Tiger Lily” team.

Peace.