So, I figured I would get a jump-start on my day off, and set my printer to print out my cardstock for the day's modelling. As I get my darlking daughter up and ready for school, I can hear the printer going. As she is eating breakfats, I go back to check on the printing, and I seem to have run out of yellow! All of my green is coming out blue, nothing looks right, but worst of all, I am going to have to wait until my daughter goes to school before I can buy a new printer cartridge, and then I am going to have to start printing all over again! Grrr..........

The last night i want print some river tiles to make a pit around my castle ...i was to do a coffe cup and when i come back the yellow an cian cartrige are over too. So i cant print my river until this morning...So i have one of those nigths...

The massive engines I work with come with full toner (It doesn't come in the box, we pull some out of stock for you) and the latest can handle 300gsm or more, but these are office size engines and the prices are comparable to those of cars.
Also the newest systems compared to the next newest have trouble filling single colour blocks, given the test pages I am given to print the c252 is vastly superior. However for some reason when I printed the Toposolitario Walrus out on both the c253 gave something closer to what was on the screen.... the c252 vehicle was darker and redder.
The Oki colour printers will handle these fine and are much cheaper.
We do sometimes have HP or Lexmark printers but I have not found the ability to handle thick-3 card, plus the Lexmarks are simply dodgy.
HP did have a large ink printer they claimed to work at the speed and accuracy of an electrostatic but with ink resolution. I haven't seen one.

How well does the ink stick, i've tried a few different color lasers now and each has had the same issue, score and fold any tiny bits and the ink starts to flake of the surface. This been fixed? or am I alone in seeing this?

electrostatic printing uses a dry toner, not an ink, it doesn't seep into and permanently get in the fibres of the paper like ink, it is melted and pressurized on. It will never stop crazing, but if it is flaking off terribly there is something wrong with the fuser.
Fun fact: toner does go off...
I use a ballpoint instead of scoring.

Concerning solid ink printers I have a (very?) little experience.

In the early 90ties we used a Howtek (possibly an early Xerox) system that was originally made for printing out computer tomographies. It came at the price of a new car and I guess the resolution was 150dpi at best (opposed to nowadays 2400dpi). We used it for presentations (Graphic Design) The prints looked rather professional but had some issues.

The ink is a waxy resin that is molten and then bubbled onto the paper. Given to the nature of the ink which is a lot like crayon it has rather similar issues.
Back in the 90ies it was not temperature stable (leave this in the sun for a while and you'll know) and not long term stable (the ink used to develop a whitish surface with time) Most likely they'll have solved these problems by now, but you should definitely inquire about them.

Other disadvantages were that the ink tended to be slightly sticky towards itself. Thus if you left two prints facing each other for some time the ink would merge and not come apart without loss.
It also stuck when left in the vicinity of vinyl and softener containing plastic (like protective sleeves).

The final issue we had was that the ink was not soaked deeply into the paper but remained as tiny convex hills. While folding was not really a problem (no flaking), the ink was far from scratch proof ...

I hope this helps a little to ask the right questions when considering this rather expensive but convenient looking printer option. I'll definitely order that free sample page Xerox offers to test this ...

PS Edit: one huge advantage is that the ink is waterproof unlike so many ink-jet inks ... however in a test I just read they said that despite the proposed high resolution of 2400 dpi the wax droplets tend to merge while printing obscuring smaller details and that color transitions look somewhat staggered. A GERMAN review can be found here: (sorry, in German language)

Those 'solid ink' printers are the old Tektronix ones. Xerox bought the company.

If these are anything like the ones we had the 'ink' is really just crayon-type material.

Side note - the excess ink from these goes into a waste tray in the bottom. That waste material makes great crayons for the kiddies.

One thing that always irked one of the people who used it was that it would never print true reds. I don't know why she had such a thing about true reds because we were doing nothing relating to graphic design but there you go.

Maybe they improved the color registration in these models.

The printed surfaces had a wax coating where it printed. I'm not sure if this would crack during scoring/folding or if it would give you problems with glue adhesion.

Denny - contact Xerox and see if they'll send you a model to test. You would be surprised what a few minutes on the phone will get you.

I have used the Xerox solid ink printers and have found the prints to be excellent. The ink has a slightly raised feel to it and feels waxy over large areas, but is very durable and very bright.

Jesse

We used to use the Phaser printers where I work, and while I should say we abused them, they can be a bear if they break! We had to constantly have the repair guy in to repair them due to the amount of use we put them through.

Now, I doubt that for what we do in the hobby would be enough abuse to cause you to need repairs, our level of use isn't anywhere near what we do at my job, but a couple things to remember about the Phasers.

One, they melt their ink, so if you ever turn the unit off, they'll have to go through a warm up cycle before you can use them and you do loose ink while they start up. Also, every so often they clean the print head, which again uses that ink!

The other big thing is you can't print on both sides!

Beyond that, they do create very nice print outs!

Skunk

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