A new amorphous Silicon drum printer, the FS-1500, has been launched by Kyoto-based Kyocera Corp. Kyocera claims this first model of its Ecosys range to be revolutionary on three counts. It incorporates a durable, scratch-resistant amorphous Silicon drum that is as hard as sapphire. Unlike most drums, it is not photosensitive and should have the same five-year life-span as the average printer. Amorphous Silicon is a compound of Silicon and Hydrogen that is sealed onto the drum. It uses a newly-developed microfine toner, Ecotone. This is a mixture of toner with abrasives – ceramic powder – and drifters, which cleans and reconditions the drum each time it is used. Thus, there are no cleaning or maintenance costs. Ecotone yields about 5,000 pages per UKP30 cartridge. And the FS-1500’s engine is designed around a compact light emitting diode – LED – scanning system that produces 300 dots per inch by 1,200 dots per inch print quality. The hermetically-sealed LED head passes very close to the drum, emitting tiny light rays that give off a positive charge. This charge knocks dots of black toner off the drum onto the paper, which subsequently moves on into a fuser unit. LED printers have suffered in the past from poor-quality fonts and vector graphics, but such problems have apparently been solved by means of Kyocera Image Refinement, the first LED-based resolution optimisation technique. The name Ecosys was chosen for this proposed range on several counts.
Economy and ecological
ECO stands for both economy and ecological. On the economy side, the FS-1500 prints 10 pages per minute and users will pay 0.6p per page, compared with the 1.4p per page paid by users of the Hewlett-Packard Co’s LaserJet IIIsi, and the industry average of 2p per page. In addition, by eliminating the need to replace the drum, all consumables except toner are removed, which is said to cut ownership costs by two thirds for companies with print volumes of 15,000 or more pages per month. This is said to make printing cheaper than photocopying in many cases. The $3,200m-a-year fine ceramic products and dedicated page printer manufacturer claims that its toner will complete 200,000 pages at UKP1,198 in comparison with Hewlett-Packard’s product at UKP4,150. The ecological advantages of the system include no longer having to dispose of environmentally-damaging drum and developer, toner cartridges that can be burned without emitting harmful substances, ozone levels reduced to a tenth of former levels and little noise emission due to the absence of a polygon motor. The SYS in Ecosys refers to its upgradable system, achieved by means of expansion modules that stack beneath the printer vertically in a tower-like arrangement, while there are two integrated circuit card interfaces for storing additional fonts, forms and logos. The FS-1500, with about half the footprint of comparable page printers, is due to ship in June and costs UKP20,000.
