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Xerox Phaser 8200 Solid Ink Printer Observations
I have been using the Xerox 8200DP Solid Ink Printer for over a year,
now, and thought the following observations might help potential buyers or users trying to make a decision on this unit. 1) As reported elsewhere, setup is incredibly easy. 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. 3) Xerox owns the technology so it should be the only company you can buy this type of printer from. 4) Main benefits include ease-of-use and the finish look (if it appeals to you). I have a screenprinter associate who dearly loves the output. Professional photographers may not / will not. This printer is very good for brochures and fliers, but is not for archival-quality imaging. 5) Since it can do Double-Sided printing, pre-printed sheets should be able to go through for a second pass at a later date -- but there is one small drawback. The second printing will cause the first side to take on a different finish quality. Both sides will not have the same glossiness. 6) I would NOT recommend third-party off-brand ink. Although I have used them successfully, I had some real scares with this ink. I think the biggest problem is two-fold -- even if the printing works successfully. a) The cheaper wax units typically have a lot of flaking and breaking problems. Clean them thoroughly by wiping with a cloth before inserting them into the cavities while refilling this printer. If flakes get down into the printhead area, the result may appear to be clogged heads when, in fact, they are merely blocked by debris. I was successful in using a can of compressed air to remove much of this. b) Even if you have no flaking, it was very evident after using these inks that they rub off or can be far more easily scratched than the original Xerox inks. If durability is important to you, don't use them. 7) Wax inks can actually be "polished" to some degree to get rid of blemishes after printing. If you get a slight scuffing on your image, a soft tissue will bring back the gloss, and hide the defect. Rubbing too hard may show the paper underneath. 8) Add-in memory from third-party manufacturers DO work in this printer. In my opinion, you are unwise to pay $500 or $800 for Xerox-branded memory modules when you can look up a perfectly compatible module at Kingston.com and pay as little as $57 online for an additional 128MB of RAM. Installation is very easy. I got this advice from a Service Tech at Xerox. 9) The add-in Hard Drive option may be different. I have not tried buying anything that is supposedly compatible. 10) In a book written by Harald Johnson, called "Mastering Digital Printing", he states that Xerox claims the fade-resistance of the wax output from this printer is ONLY "a year or more" with office lighting and "over several years" with dark storage. Do NOT, then, consider this unit for printing archival-quality images. 11) This is a true piezoelectric inkjet, defined by its design characteristics -- except for the fact that its ink is resin-based. Instead of smaller printheads for each color, the printhead extends across the entire width of the sheet -- 88 nozzles in each row of 4. However, the ink does not go directly onto the paper -- it first gets applied to a rotating drum, then gets transferred to the paper in a single pass. Therefore, it has an advantage in faster print speed over almost all lasers, which typically print each color separately using four passes. And the alignment of colors is more reliable with less moving parts. Also, the ink is independent of the media since there is no wicking or absorbing that takes place. Hence, the colors are a lot more vibrant than most anything else. It really resembles screenprinting of heavy ink onto the substrate instead of airbrushing applied to a porous material. 12) I have NOT had any jams in over a year of printing. My earlier Minolta color laser drove me crazy with jamming. 13) The special features of my DP model have proven to be VERY comfortable and usable -- especially the Double-Sided Printing ability. I have loved working with this printer far more than any other that I've owned. The ease-of-use makes up for the pitfalls. Ink seems expensive at first blush, but try buying 4 cartridges of toner for a Lexmark or Minolta color laser and you'll be SHOCKED at the cost of feeding those beasts. Then add in the $400 or so you'll need for drum replacement in those machines, coating rollers, etc. This is a PERFECT color printer for a small business needing to create promotional fliers, letterheads, etc., but is NOT a particularly good choice for a professional photography or design studio. This is NOT -- in my experience as a graphic artist -- a good choice for Color Proofing. No other printer uses this technology, so what are you hoping to "compare"?? 14) This unit will NOT print a full Legal-sized page in color. The print area is restricted to 12 inches of the 14 inch dimension. Bummer! That is because of the size of the drum and the process it uses to print in one pass. In the old days, they didn't tell you this in the literature. But if you look closely, you'll see the maximum printing area defined for each sheet size that the printer will handle. Stating that it will print on a Legal sheet does NOT mean the same thing as stating it will print a full page of image area on that sheet. 15) I have NOT been able to get the "Booklet" feature of the driver to work, even wih the Memory maxed-out to 256MB. You may need the expensive Hard Drive Option to utilize the Booklet Feature of its driver. However, you can also simply buy ClickBook for a lot less money, if you wish. I have the DP unit, so the Booklet feature supposedly works, but I have not found the secret, just yet. 16) In my experience, all is NOT necessarily lost if you clog this with third-party inks. It just recently happened to me, while trying to complete a Christmas Card project for a friend. But you may go through 8 or more ink cartridges of every color while getting the clogged jets to clear up. My procedure involved turning it completely off for 4 hours to cool. Then restarting it, which runs the full purge cycle. Then immediately running a cleaning cycle. Repeat about 6 times over as many days. You might as well use up that third party ink, anyway -- because if you survive this carnage, you'll never buy them, again. I did not have a single instance of clogged jets until the very instant that the new, cheaper ink hit the printheads. After that, the clogging was instantaneous. I was fortunate in that it eventually cleared. The friend immediately noticed that the new ink flakes off the paper and is far more easily scratched than the original ink. So in my humble opinion, it simply isn't worth it to chance destruction of a $2,000 printer. I hope this helps! Guy Owen USA |
#2
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Guy Owen wrote:
Thank you for your most useful comments. I have an 860DX (including hard disk, duplex etc, and supposingly free black ink for life). It was bought primarily for office type printing so the (glossy) surface it produces is impressive :-) One comment. Have you had Cyan ink being burned and turn to a green brown colour? (It is a feature of the 860 if the printer is not used enough. It takes about two stix [sic] of inc to clear it and approx. 200 A4 pages of pure cyan colour. I have been using the Xerox 8200DP Solid Ink Printer for over a year, now, and thought the following observations might help potential buyers or users trying to make a decision on this unit. 1) As reported elsewhere, setup is incredibly easy. 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. What other lasers do you have in mind here? I am thinking of photographic type printing. 3) Xerox owns the technology so it should be the only company you can buy this type of printer from. Given the limited range available, ie. 1 model, and the fact that the phaser name is used on *other* xerox laser printers, it might be coming to an end. snip 10) In a book written by Harald Johnson, called "Mastering Digital Printing", he states that Xerox claims the fade-resistance of the wax output from this printer is ONLY "a year or more" with office lighting and "over several years" with dark storage. Do NOT, then, consider this unit for printing archival-quality images. About 6 months is our experience (office + natural lighting). snip All said and done ... I have now needed a couple of times an A3 printer. They are expensive :-( Charles |
#3
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In answer to your questions below...
No, I have never had any burning issues that I've noticed. Certainly nothing like what you describe -- in fact, I'm amazed even that amount of printing would clear such a situation. And my printer has sat unused for a few weeks at a time. Of course, you do need to leave it on all the time as directed by Xerox. I wonder if the latest downloadable Firmware Update might help in your situation? As to "Photographic" lasers, everything is obviously in the eye of the beholder. The latest Xerox lasers are reportedly very good for photographic output, but I don't think any of them compare to the latest top-end inkjets -- and none of those create as good of a "photo look" as does, say, a HiTi 630PS or 730PS Dye Sublimation unit. But those restrict you to smaller image sizes. In my opinion, a toner-based color laser comes closer to photographic than does my 8200, but the finish on the 8200 is remarkable compared to toner-based. The only other unit I'm familiar with that had any control over the finish was the retired Lexmark Optra C. It's Contone setting was remarkable, but there were some engineering snafus with that unit and it would lose its quality as time went by. Of course, it cost $7,000 when it came out! Ouch! Guy Charles Christacopoulos wrote in message ... Guy Owen wrote: Thank you for your most useful comments. I have an 860DX (including hard disk, duplex etc, and supposingly free black ink for life). It was bought primarily for office type printing so the (glossy) surface it produces is impressive :-) One comment. Have you had Cyan ink being burned and turn to a green brown colour? (It is a feature of the 860 if the printer is not used enough. It takes about two stix [sic] of inc to clear it and approx. 200 A4 pages of pure cyan colour. I have been using the Xerox 8200DP Solid Ink Printer for over a year, now, and thought the following observations might help potential buyers or users trying to make a decision on this unit. 1) As reported elsewhere, setup is incredibly easy. 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. What other lasers do you have in mind here? I am thinking of photographic type printing. 3) Xerox owns the technology so it should be the only company you can buy this type of printer from. Given the limited range available, ie. 1 model, and the fact that the phaser name is used on *other* xerox laser printers, it might be coming to an end. snip 10) In a book written by Harald Johnson, called "Mastering Digital Printing", he states that Xerox claims the fade-resistance of the wax output from this printer is ONLY "a year or more" with office lighting and "over several years" with dark storage. Do NOT, then, consider this unit for printing archival-quality images. About 6 months is our experience (office + natural lighting). snip All said and done ... I have now needed a couple of times an A3 printer. They are expensive :-( Charles |
#4
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UPDATE 12-24-03:
Xerox responded today concerning my problem of not being able to do Booklet printing. It has nothing to do with having an Internal Hard Drive in the Printer (as reported or surmised in some other postings). Assuming you've download and installed the latest driver (particularly the Postscript driver, according to Xerox -- but I haven't tried any others) -- the real culprit seems to be Adobe PDF file format problems. Simply selecting File / Print / Properties / and choosing Booklet in the Pages Per Sheet selection box should work. If it does not, find the Advanced Button in the initial Print Dialog Box, and change the printing choice to "PRINT AS IMAGE". This DOES work, and very well, at that. Again, you could also buy ClickBook or some other composing software utility, which should give additional controls to this process. Guy Charles Christacopoulos wrote in message ... Guy Owen wrote: Thank you for your most useful comments. I have an 860DX (including hard disk, duplex etc, and supposingly free black ink for life). It was bought primarily for office type printing so the (glossy) surface it produces is impressive :-) One comment. Have you had Cyan ink being burned and turn to a green brown colour? (It is a feature of the 860 if the printer is not used enough. It takes about two stix [sic] of inc to clear it and approx. 200 A4 pages of pure cyan colour. I have been using the Xerox 8200DP Solid Ink Printer for over a year, now, and thought the following observations might help potential buyers or users trying to make a decision on this unit. 1) As reported elsewhere, setup is incredibly easy. 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. What other lasers do you have in mind here? I am thinking of photographic type printing. 3) Xerox owns the technology so it should be the only company you can buy this type of printer from. Given the limited range available, ie. 1 model, and the fact that the phaser name is used on *other* xerox laser printers, it might be coming to an end. snip 10) In a book written by Harald Johnson, called "Mastering Digital Printing", he states that Xerox claims the fade-resistance of the wax output from this printer is ONLY "a year or more" with office lighting and "over several years" with dark storage. Do NOT, then, consider this unit for printing archival-quality images. About 6 months is our experience (office + natural lighting). snip All said and done ... I have now needed a couple of times an A3 printer. They are expensive :-( Charles |
#5
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Thanks for the observations, they are very helpful.
Can you or anyone who has used this printer tell me what is the SMALLEST size of paper that the printer can print on? I use a black laser printer from Xerox right now, and when I feed small index cards through it, it gets jammed every time. Thanks very much. - Boghosian Guy Owen wrote: I have been using the Xerox 8200DP Solid Ink Printer for over a year, now, and thought the following observations might help potential buyers or users trying to make a decision on this unit. 1) As reported elsewhere, setup is incredibly easy. 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. 3) Xerox owns the technology so it should be the only company you can buy this type of printer from. 4) Main benefits include ease-of-use and the finish look (if it appeals to you). I have a screenprinter associate who dearly loves the output. Professional photographers may not / will not. This printer is very good for brochures and fliers, but is not for archival-quality imaging. 5) Since it can do Double-Sided printing, pre-printed sheets should be able to go through for a second pass at a later date -- but there is one small drawback. The second printing will cause the first side to take on a different finish quality. Both sides will not have the same glossiness. 6) I would NOT recommend third-party off-brand ink. Although I have used them successfully, I had some real scares with this ink. I think the biggest problem is two-fold -- even if the printing works successfully. a) The cheaper wax units typically have a lot of flaking and breaking problems. Clean them thoroughly by wiping with a cloth before inserting them into the cavities while refilling this printer. If flakes get down into the printhead area, the result may appear to be clogged heads when, in fact, they are merely blocked by debris. I was successful in using a can of compressed air to remove much of this. b) Even if you have no flaking, it was very evident after using these inks that they rub off or can be far more easily scratched than the original Xerox inks. If durability is important to you, don't use them. 7) Wax inks can actually be "polished" to some degree to get rid of blemishes after printing. If you get a slight scuffing on your image, a soft tissue will bring back the gloss, and hide the defect. Rubbing too hard may show the paper underneath. 8) Add-in memory from third-party manufacturers DO work in this printer. In my opinion, you are unwise to pay $500 or $800 for Xerox-branded memory modules when you can look up a perfectly compatible module at Kingston.com and pay as little as $57 online for an additional 128MB of RAM. Installation is very easy. I got this advice from a Service Tech at Xerox. 9) The add-in Hard Drive option may be different. I have not tried buying anything that is supposedly compatible. 10) In a book written by Harald Johnson, called "Mastering Digital Printing", he states that Xerox claims the fade-resistance of the wax output from this printer is ONLY "a year or more" with office lighting and "over several years" with dark storage. Do NOT, then, consider this unit for printing archival-quality images. 11) This is a true piezoelectric inkjet, defined by its design characteristics -- except for the fact that its ink is resin-based. Instead of smaller printheads for each color, the printhead extends across the entire width of the sheet -- 88 nozzles in each row of 4. However, the ink does not go directly onto the paper -- it first gets applied to a rotating drum, then gets transferred to the paper in a single pass. Therefore, it has an advantage in faster print speed over almost all lasers, which typically print each color separately using four passes. And the alignment of colors is more reliable with less moving parts. Also, the ink is independent of the media since there is no wicking or absorbing that takes place. Hence, the colors are a lot more vibrant than most anything else. It really resembles screenprinting of heavy ink onto the substrate instead of airbrushing applied to a porous material. 12) I have NOT had any jams in over a year of printing. My earlier Minolta color laser drove me crazy with jamming. 13) The special features of my DP model have proven to be VERY comfortable and usable -- especially the Double-Sided Printing ability. I have loved working with this printer far more than any other that I've owned. The ease-of-use makes up for the pitfalls. Ink seems expensive at first blush, but try buying 4 cartridges of toner for a Lexmark or Minolta color laser and you'll be SHOCKED at the cost of feeding those beasts. Then add in the $400 or so you'll need for drum replacement in those machines, coating rollers, etc. This is a PERFECT color printer for a small business needing to create promotional fliers, letterheads, etc., but is NOT a particularly good choice for a professional photography or design studio. This is NOT -- in my experience as a graphic artist -- a good choice for Color Proofing. No other printer uses this technology, so what are you hoping to "compare"?? 14) This unit will NOT print a full Legal-sized page in color. The print area is restricted to 12 inches of the 14 inch dimension. Bummer! That is because of the size of the drum and the process it uses to print in one pass. In the old days, they didn't tell you this in the literature. But if you look closely, you'll see the maximum printing area defined for each sheet size that the printer will handle. Stating that it will print on a Legal sheet does NOT mean the same thing as stating it will print a full page of image area on that sheet. 15) I have NOT been able to get the "Booklet" feature of the driver to work, even wih the Memory maxed-out to 256MB. You may need the expensive Hard Drive Option to utilize the Booklet Feature of its driver. However, you can also simply buy ClickBook for a lot less money, if you wish. I have the DP unit, so the Booklet feature supposedly works, but I have not found the secret, just yet. 16) In my experience, all is NOT necessarily lost if you clog this with third-party inks. It just recently happened to me, while trying to complete a Christmas Card project for a friend. But you may go through 8 or more ink cartridges of every color while getting the clogged jets to clear up. My procedure involved turning it completely off for 4 hours to cool. Then restarting it, which runs the full purge cycle. Then immediately running a cleaning cycle. Repeat about 6 times over as many days. You might as well use up that third party ink, anyway -- because if you survive this carnage, you'll never buy them, again. I did not have a single instance of clogged jets until the very instant that the new, cheaper ink hit the printheads. After that, the clogging was instantaneous. I was fortunate in that it eventually cleared. The friend immediately noticed that the new ink flakes off the paper and is far more easily scratched than the original ink. So in my humble opinion, it simply isn't worth it to chance destruction of a $2,000 printer. I hope this helps! Guy Owen USA |
#6
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"boghosian" wrote in message
ups.com... Can you or anyone who has used this printer tell me what is the SMALLEST size of paper that the printer can print on? I use a black The Phaser 8200 can only print on exact, specific dimensions, which are listed somewhere in their marketing materials on the Xerox website. It is NOT possible to define any custom sizes on the 8200, and if you try to print on paper that does not match exactly the expected dimensions it will refuse to print. (It does not want to leave any wax ink on the drum, 'cause that will wind up somewhere on the next printout and that's not a good thing...) However, the 8400, which is the newer, replacement model to the 8400, is a better choice. You can define custom paper sizes although you will have margins of about 1/2 inch all around. The marketing materials on the site list the largest and smallest dimensions that can be set up (smallest is 3x5), as well as the maximum paper weights supported (in my experience, this is somewhat conservative because it is just based on paper weight, but if you exceed the specs they won't support you in resolving the problems, and you may be damaging the printer). It has a setting for 3x5 index cards already, so you will have smaller margins around the edge, and I've printed on index cards on my 8400 without any problem. Also, with the "offset" style printing method, you should be able to print on just about any type of paper stock that can take the heat from the drum (try www.macpapers.com), you will not need to buy special "laser" or "inkjet" paper. (Note: very slick laminated or UV coated paper stock or postcards may slip on the drum and cause jams) Also, because the wax is applied to the paper using heat, you should not try to print over top of the same printed side, the drum will pick up the wax etc. I recommend that you visit the Xerox website http://www.office.xerox.com/ for all the details on the 8400, including copies of the manuals. They cover custom paper sizes and paper weights in more detail. Roger |
#7
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I also wish to thank Gary on this conmprehensive review of the
Xerox/Tektronix solid ink technology. I thinkit will be very helpful for people considering these types of printers. However, I'd like to comment on this statement below: 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. This statement is, I suspect, based upon some outdated experience with inkjet printers. State of the art inkjet printers today quite exceed the quality of the vast majority of color laser printers on the market today. In fact, almost all current inkjet printers do. With proper paper types, it would be hard pressed for even the well-trained eye to distinguish between a lab quality silver based color photograph and a color inkjet print. It is color laser printer quality that now has to bring itslef up to inkjet printer quality. Art boghosian wrote: Thanks for the observations, they are very helpful. Can you or anyone who has used this printer tell me what is the SMALLEST size of paper that the printer can print on? I use a black laser printer from Xerox right now, and when I feed small index cards through it, it gets jammed every time. Thanks very much. - Boghosian Guy Owen wrote: I have been using the Xerox 8200DP Solid Ink Printer for over a year, now, and thought the following observations might help potential buyers or users trying to make a decision on this unit. 1) As reported elsewhere, setup is incredibly easy. 2) Output is very nice, indeed, but does not compete with the Photographic Quality of other color lasers. In fact, this is more like an inkjet or BubbleJet than a laser, so it shouldn't really be put into the laser category. 3) Xerox owns the technology so it should be the only company you can buy this type of printer from. 4) Main benefits include ease-of-use and the finish look (if it appeals to you). I have a screenprinter associate who dearly loves the output. Professional photographers may not / will not. This printer is very good for brochures and fliers, but is not for archival-quality imaging. cut |
#8
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Thanks very much for this thorough detail Roger. In your response you
mention "offset" style printing. Can you explain what that is? Thanks, - Sasha |
#9
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"boghosian" wrote in message
ups.com... Thanks very much for this thorough detail Roger. In your response you mention "offset" style printing. Can you explain what that is? Thanks, The complete description is quite detailed, you'll find resources at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_printing and you may want to Google for "offset printing". Essentially it's a method of commercial printing where ink does not do directly from the printing plate to the paper, but instead is transferred to a drum (usually rubber) that applies the ink to the moving paper. If your question was how the Phaser solid ink printers are related to offset printing, the Xerox web site has a Flash demo called "So how does solid ink work?" (look on http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin...l?product=8400 for the link) . To compare it to offset printing, the ink is transferred to a steel drum that has a light coat of oil on it. As the paper passes over the rotating drum, the hot waxy ink is transferred to the paper. The ink (or toner) does not require a static charge like a laser, nor does it require absorbent paper like an inkjet. I've found that my output is extremely consistent from page to page, and it doesn't seem to matter what type of paper I use. Roger |
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