With many years’ experience in printers technology research and design Fujitsu has always endorsed the four principles of Quality, Reliability, Speed and Cost of Ownership. Impact printers are a long-standing, proven technology that is still providing users with a cost-effective solution for some of their organisations’ most critical applications and while other manufacturers have either withdrawn from or stopped investing in this market, Fujitsu remains firmly committed to seeing this technology into the future.
Quality
Much of Fujitsu’s research and development is focussed on print quality and the performance of our dot matrix printheads. Better defined characters and letter quality text are both achievable with 24 pins resulting in substantially reduced misspresentation or errors in the final copy. Companies are increasingly moving to 24-pin technology and benefiting from draft and letter quality printing in the same box. This is why Fujitsu only develops superior 24 pin printhead technology.
Reliability
Whilst in many organisations laser printers follow the desktop refresh cycle, most impact printers are ignored as they are still effortlessly performing their task as they are more reliable than most office equipment. Fujitsu printers are designed specifically to withstand the environment they are be it a busy warehouse, a hospital reception desk or the general office environment. Regardless of build quality dot matrix printers will always require consumables and often overlooked are replacement printheads. Fujitsu engineers their printheads to the highest specification with up to 400 million strokes for each wire, about 100% more reliable than most alternatives.
All printer manufacturers are required to publish an indication of the MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure), the average number of printing hours before failure. Fujitsu desktop dot matrix printers have an unequalled MTBF of 20,000 hours whilst our heavy duty ones (DL6400 and DL6600) have an MTBF of 8,000 hours.
Speed Fujitsu engineering remains resolute that additional quality and reliability of its range of dot matrix printers does not compromise on speed and performance. The desktop impact printer range provides high speed draft speeds of up to 537 CPS or letter quality of 270CPS.
Cost of Ownership
Impact printing technology is still the most economical way of putting characters on paper or multipart stationery; the entire process is significantly less costly than laser printing and from one image (pass) six or more copies are easily created. with less moving components an impact printer is much more reliable, making maintenance costs vastly cheaper; the cost of a ribbon is at least a tenth of the cost of a laser cartridge.
When choosing an impact printer ownership costs can vary between manufacturers. Fujitsu prides itself in presenting a much stronger case for overall cost of ownership when compared to competing machines in the same class. Key areas where Fujitsu is very strong are printhead life and MTBF.
Conclusion
Impact printing, the first commercially available printing technology will continue to support businesses in the future particularly mission critical printing applications. The end of month invoice run and despatch notes are just a few examples of where impact printing remains the preferred solution and even more critical applications such as pay slips and packing notes generated by distribution centres are all typically facilitated by impact printers. Where others desist Fujitsu is committed to researching and developing ever more reliable solutions for this mission critical applications to help businesses as they grow.
