Building & Design

Xerox is getting ready to produce a new generation energy efficient toner that the company promises will cut the power consumption of digital printing by 15-30%.

Currently, around 50-80% of the total power consumed during printing is expended during the fusing (or sealing) of the toner onto the page.
But Xerox’s new ultralow-melt EA (emulsion aggregation) toner lowers this fusing temperature. The company claims that the new toner melts at a temperature 25°C lower than EA toners currently in use.

Scientists at the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC) developed the new toner, which consists of the polymer polyester (a type of plastic), coloured pigments and wax particles.

“This was the most difficult toner design we ever worked on,” says Hadi Mahabadi, vice president and manager at XRCC.

EA toners already use 40-50% less material than the previous generation of toners and produce higher quality images with greater reliability, claims Xerox.

The manufacturing process for this type of toner is also much more energy efficient than the older generation of toners, which involved mechanical grinding of plastic pellets into a very fine powder.

Xerox will make the new toner at its Webster plant in New York starting sometime next year, according to project manager Edouard Langlois. The company’s future generation of desktop, office and commercial printers, the first of which – a commercial colour press – is being produced in Japan, will use the new toner.

For further information:
www.xerox.com
www.xerox.com/innovation/xrcc.shtml