First let’s establish how solid ink printers work. The solid ink technology was developed in 1986 by a company named Tektronix. Xerox later on acquired Tekronix (in 2000) as well as the technology. Soon enough they incorporated it into their own products. The technology uses blocks or sticks of solid ink instead of your regular liquid ink or toner powder.

The ink is heated to a specific temperature and then melted onto a drum. After the ink turns liquid, the drum rolls the ink onto paper. According to Xerox solid ink is supposed to produce more vibrant colors than the competing technologies. Another good point is that a wider variety of media can be used. Another thing that makes solid ink different is the glossy, wax like finish of the paper. When warmed up, printers using solid ink technology have pretty fast print speeds. Unfortunately it takes a while for the devices to get warmed up, in some cases.

While the main producer of solid inks at this moment is Xerox, and for that reason they can afford keeping up some relatively high prices, there are third party solid ink blocks on the market. They are considerably cheaper, but the down side is that using them will void your warranty. The ink-sticks are coded by shape, and Xerox made sure to provide the sticks in different shapes, so that they can only fit into certain slots on a printer.

Compared to color laser printers, solid ink printers are much more simple as design. The actual hardware that makes the printing take place only includes a print head, a print drum and the controller. One device to use the solid ink technology is the Phaser 8650. Compared to a color laser printer, this one is significantly faster. It will take a couple of minutes each morning to warm it up, but once the ink is melted, it will do up to 17 pages per minute in good quality or 30 pages per minute in fast color mode.

The Xerox Phaser 8650 solid ink printer will take up a lot of space in your office. But it gives a lot back in exchange for the space you give it. It can do very high quality scanning, coping, printing and faxing. It’s an ideal candidate for offices that need a fast and reliable color printer. Another advantage over an inkjet printer, for example is that it costs less per page to print, and it produces less waste. It’s a perfect printer if you’re looking for a high volume, high capacity device. One problem that you may encounter in the case of the Phaser 8650 solid ink printer is that the ink on a page can be scraped off pretty easily with a fingernail or key, so it does offer less reliability over time than other technologies. Overall though, the Phaser 8650 is a very good alternative to a color laser printer.