Printer Is Friendly To The Planet
The Age
Monday September 7, 1992
The Japanese printing manufacturer Kyocera has produced the first office printer to receive accreditation from the Australian Environmentally Friendly Program.
The Ecosys aSi printer is the first in a new generation of conservation-conscious laser printers. Kyocera says the new technology will be gradually incorporated across its entire range.
The Ecosys aSi costs about $4275, and produces 10 pages per minute at an average operating cost of 1.8 cents per page.
The printer uses a biodegrable technology featuring an amorphous silicon drum that Kyocera claims is built to last the life of the printer, unlike usual all-in-one laser cartridges which need replacing between 60 and 70 times during the life of most Ecosys competitors.
The time, inconvenience and ecological disadvantages of replacing or refilling cartridges can now be eliminated, said Mr Cliff Smith, the managing director of Kyocera Electronics Australia.
Other features include a non-cartridge light emitting diode head which significantly lowers ozone emission, does not require an ozone filter and cuts the printer's energy consumption by 20 per cent.
The Ecosys aSi is H-P laserjet III compatible, and is said to be quiet in both idling and operation modes. It happily uses recycled paper. It links to PC, Macintosh or Unix-based platforms and emulations include PCL-5, Diablo 630, KC-GL (H-P _ GL) IBM Proprinter X.24E, Epson LQ-850 and Line Printer. When dedicated to a specific port, three different emulations can be run simultaneously.
Also new from Kyocera in Australia is the FS-5500, an AM 29000 RISC-processor-based laser printer/ plotter for users wanting to produce designs on A3 format while simultaneously printing and manufacturing quality office documentation in a variety of sizes to A4.
It prints at 12 and nine pages per minute for A4 and A3 respectively.
It is useful for desktop publishing, imaging, CAD project management, financial planning and barcode applications in business offices and government departments. The new 5500 offers both PostScript and H-P Laserjet 111 and has four interfaces that allow concurrent connectivity to serial, parallel, Appletalk and either Ethernet or Token Ring.
Its capacity features 192 resident fonts, 41 barcode types. The printer retails for about $10,000 and an Apple version has also just been released.
But Mr Smith says that these 5500 printers will be the last generation of lasers to be produced by his company and will be replaced by the more environmentally friendly amorphous technology introduced by the Ecosys aSi.
``To save the problem of waste and pollution, it is necessary to change technology," he explained. ``Recycling is currently acceptable as a limited answer, because that is all companies and customers can do now, but Kyocera is working on not creating the waste in the first place."
© 1992 The Age
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