The state of electrostatic printers in the year 2003

Even still today, every print shop I visit who has an electrostatic printer, this machine is earning a profit every day. Dye sublimation onto fabric was always a prime use of electrostatic printers. The ColorgrafX 8954-DS was a modified version of the Xerox ColorgrafX 8900.

ColorgrafX Printer

However electrostatic and oil-based inkjet printers are two technologies which are going the way of the antiquated airbrush machines. In other words, if you already have an electrostatic printer in use, fine. But if not, this is not necessarily the way to go (unless you get the printer almost free, unless you have a local place which can service it, and assuming you have a technician who can keep it running).

For years the Xerox home page offered virtually no help for anyone seeking information on large format printers at Xerox. You had to know that large format printers had been shunted off to XES (xes.com). Here you get the remnants of ColorgrapfX. The Xerox electrostatic printers of a similar name are dead. People who paid big money for these electrostatic printers are now stuck, often with no one to service them. Their former web site colorgrafX.com is long ago dead. If you try that address today you get spam pop-ups.

Since FLAAR is a university based institute, it is logical that the professors who run it are curious about the history of inkjet technology. If you have any tidbits on electrostatic printers, especially Versitec, ColorgrafX, Xerox, or Phoenix, please send them to ReaderService@FLAAR.org.

We are preparing a course on inkjet printing (for Distance learning, via the Internet, open to anyone; you don’t have to be a student at our university). For the unit on electrostatic printers we would be happy to have more documentation.

First posted May, 2003.