http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20081118/BUSINESS/811180310/1001
Webster’s Xerox plant will soon produce a new kind of toner
Xerox
Corp. is making a major addition to the toner plant it opened in 2007
at its Webster campus.Construction crews on Monday were busy hauling
six 25,000-gallon tanks into place for production of Ultra Low-Melt EA
toner.The 100,000-square-foot EA toner plant — the company’s first
sizable addition to the 1,100-acre campus in more than 20 years — uses
chemical processes to “grow” toner from its ingredients into individual
toner particles.That contrasts with the decades-old method of making
toner by grinding plastic composites into fine particles.Ultra Low-Melt
is an EA toner product that melts and fuses onto paper at temperatures
as much as 45 degrees lower than Xerox’s standard EA toner, resulting
in devices using 15 percent to 30 percent less power.Ultra Low-Melt
toner is made of a blend of plastics that combine with colored pigments
and wax particles.
Xerox has one product on the market, the 700
Digital Color Press, which runs on the next-generation toner. The newly
installed tanks will allow the Webster plant to turn out Ultra Low-Melt
alongside regular EA products.Ultra Low-Melt was developed by Xerox
researchers in Canada in collaboration with Fuji Xerox Co., the
Tokyo-based joint venture between Xerox and Fuji Photo Film Co. Xerox
had been purchasing the toner from Fuji Xerox but is doing the addition
so it can produce its own, Xerox spokesman Bill McKee said.The addition
is to be operational next year.