A non-impact printer that eliminates the need for cartridge replacement and produces what are claimed to be high quality images at a quarter the cost of a laser printer has been launched in the US by industrial ceramics specialist Kyocera Corp’s Kyocera Electronics Inc. The printer uses an ultra long-life amorphous Silicon drum-developer fuser-light emitting diode imaging system and runs at 10 pages-per-minute. The family is called Ecosys and the first model is the FS-1500A. The engine of the printer features a drum composed of utra-durable, scratch-resistant amorphous Silicon, and ultra compact LED scanning system, and long-life developer and fuser units. Ceramics were used in the development of the microfine ceramic toner formula, which is embedded with tiny ceramic particles that clean and recondition the drum each time the toner is used. The company also claims that it has engineered one of the industry’s first LED-based image refinement processes to enhance the image quality of the compact scanning system, eliminating the need for complex, bulky and energy-hungry laser technology to produce images of superior quality. The operating cost is claimed to be less than a penny a page – and that’s an American penny, compared with an average per-page cost of 3.2 cents for typical laser cartridge printers in the same market category. It has optional plug-in Ethernet and Token Ring boards, Kyocera’s own PostScript-compatible interpreter and Prescribe II page description language, paper handling upgradability to as many as 1,250 pages with two additional 500-sheet drawers, duplex printing, 15-bin sorter and electronic mailbox, power envelope feeder, up to 59 scalable and 87 bitmapped fonts, two slots for up to 4Mb IC cards, and compatibility with MS-DOS, Macintosh and Unix workstations. The Ecosys printer costs $2,400 and will ship in the US later this quarter.
