Xerox color cube - findings

[Mark Bbb]

Hello,
i'm a Ricoh dealer/technician who was contacted by Xerox for selling there products.
We try to work with little impact on the environment as possible and there for the Color cube is interesting.
What are your findings?
Thanks in advance.

[chubblies]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

Great technology in theory but they are terrible machines. Xerox themselves named them the worst item they had ever sold...
They cost an absolute fortune to fix

[Mark Bbb]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

But at the other hand, the print-inkt-cost and cost of the printer itself is rather (very) low.
The quality would be mediocre...
Wright?

[monarke4]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

Hello,
i'm a Ricoh dealer/technician who was contacted by Xerox for selling there products.
We try to work with little impact on the environment as possible and there for the Color cube is interesting.
What are your findings?
Thanks in advance.

The Technology belonged to Tektronix I think. I remember seeing "Tektronix" logos on the solid ink printers around Xerox in the late 1980s.

I have never owned one but my tax account has.

My EA was purchasing supposed "compatible" solid ink for his Xerox printer. Low and behold the print engine clogged up, and could not be repaired. The company he purchased the "compatible" solid ink from is no more.

In the beginning Xerox touted "free" solid ink for life, was it? But no more.

If you would like to be amused for about 60 seconds, take a look at the "Solid Ink Dance" from 2017 in this Xerox article.

Xerox Solid Ink

[monarke4]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

Here's an old debate about leaving a Solid Ink Printer powered on 24-7 and the power consumed to heat up and keep the solid ink molten.

Apparently it was created to mislead.....

An Inconvenient Truth about Solid Ink

The Xerox Star Workstations were also left powered on most of the time..... It took anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes for a Xerox 6085 Model 1 to boot up as it would load any applications set for "auto-start" when the box was powered on....

Those were the days....

[Milo Wilson]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

That's why I have refused to work on any solid ink printer from day one. And I have worked on Xerox equipment for 23 years...lol

[prismtech]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

The Colorqube machines like all Xerox products are cheaply made junk.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

I knocked out seven ColorCubes this past summer replacing them with a combination of Laser and LED toner based print engines. The customer had the ColourCubes for five years and wanted to get rid of them because the printers were not care free, the cost savings were never there and the image quality was at best mediocre.

[rockdude]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

There are good and bad things about the Solid Ink Machines.

As for the power consumption that is absolutely "TRUE" Not only does it take up more electricity but it also "Purges" every time it's
turned back on after being shut off for more than 5 minutes. The purge melts approx. 1/8 of a stick per color for the purge.
That equates to 1/8 X 4 = 1/2 stick and approx. $50 per stick = $25.00 wasted every time you turn it off and on again.

While the graphics quality is not photo quality, it is good enough for most

[monarke4]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

I'm curious to know if there is MICR approved solid ink blocks?

That is to say if you were going to be ambitious and print your own checks from scratch....

[OMG]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

I work on lots of these. They're my albatross . Xerox told me that the life yield is 600K. I have one customer who has numerous of them with over 1 million pages.

When they start breaking they start breaking bad.

If they're out of warranty they're VERY expensive to repair so I recommend to all of my customers to keep them on a warranty plan with Xerox.

The customers who have them love them even when I tell them they're crap

customers do not understand the complexity of these boxes.

[Mark Bbb]

Re: Xerox color cube - findings

Thank you all for your input!
As long as customer is printing high volume and when average quality is good enough, than these technic is excelent.
Is this the whright conclusion?
And the logical next question:
from which copy volume is this technique suitable?