Around the same time Mrs Thatcher was coming to the end of her reign and Baywatch was the X-Factor of Saturday evening TV, a company called Tektronix launched a new range of solid ink colour office printers .Back then office colour was a high-priced luxury (along with brick sized mobile phones and garishly coloured braces) .A mainstream office printer offering high speed and low running cost was destined to be a winner.

How does Solid ink work?

Solid ink technology utilizes solid ink sticks in lieu of the toner powder usually used in printers. After the ink stick is loaded into the printing device, it is melted and used to produce images on paper in a process similar to offset printing. Solid ink printing produces more vibrant colors than other methods, is easier to use, can print on a wide range of media, and is more environmentally friendly ,reducing waste by as much as 90% when compared with toner cartridges. The sticks are non-toxic and safe and clean to handle.

Solid ink’s place in todays market!

It didn’t take long for the document industry behemoth, Xerox, to sit up and pay attention to this revolutionary new technique. They were impressed, very impressed, and in true Vicotor Kiam style , so much so, they bought the company!

With the massive resources of Xerox R&D, over the past decade, the technology has been refined .Solid ink has now made its way to mainstream applications. With the 2009 launch of the Xerox ColorQube range, multifunction tabloid color printers that use solid ink technology, Xerox have now positioned solid ink to contend directly with laser/toner technology in the multifunction office printing space.

Advantages of Solid ink technology!

As mentioned, the advantages of solid ink are many, not least of which is the ongoing running costs. The machine measures actual colour coverage and uniquely, bill accordingly on one of the three-tiers of billing. This means that when printing a small percentage of Colour (286,000 colour pixels and under if you really want to know) ,such as a company logo, the job is charged at the same cost as mono print. From Xerox’s analysis of millions of documents, this may account for up to 40% of a traditional office’s total colour output. When you consider the traditional toner machine clicks as a full colour reproduction irrespective of coverage, the savings on running costs when using solid ink can be dramatic.

So from the decade that gave us Yugo cars, legwarmers and the Rubik cube, we now have a refined technology that may just go on to revolutionise office colour printing.

The solid ink era has arrived.