Ricoh Americas Corporation, the leading provider of digital office equipment, today announced the launch of the Aficio MP C2050/MP C2550 color multifunction products. Designed for small- and medium-sized businesses, the MP C2050/MP C2550 Series provides the features typically reserved for more expensive MFPs at an affordable price.

The Aficio MP C2050/MP C2550 delivers 20 pages-per-minute (ppm) and 25 ppm for full-color and black & white output respectively, and offers resolution of up to 1200 dpi. In addition, color documents look more professional with vibrant images due to Ricoh’s new PXP toner. Businesses can enhance productivity and reduce costs simultaneously with the Aficio MP C2050/MP C2550 Series as it saves paper by printing two-sided documents at nearly 100% of the simplex speed.

The MP C2050/MP C2550 Series expedites important document communications with customers, colleagues and other business partners efficiently with several Scan-to functions, including Scan-to-Email, Scan-to-FTP and Scan-to-Folder. A new feature, the Scan-to-Media function, allows users to
store scanned documents directly to a USB memory device or SD memory card, for instant portability.

The Aficio MP C2050/MP C2550 Series is equipped with an 8.5″ full-color W-VGA display for easy navigation. In addition, the Series supports a number of third party solutions, including GlobalScan NX and the Card Authentication Package, which enables users to efficiently and effortlessly complete tasks.

The suggested retail price for the Aficio MP C2050 and MP C2550 is $5,800 and $7,500 respectively.

Office workers can breathe easily now that German scientists have shown that laser printer emit ‘hardly any’ particles of black toner, a potential carcinogen.

A previous study by the Queensland University of Technology found that printers emitted clouds of particles that were five times higher than levels outside, which they assumed could include potentially dangerous toner dust.

However, researchers at the Fraunhofer Wilhelm Klauditz Institute in Braunschweig looked into exact composition of the emissions.

“Some printers do emit ultra-fine particles made of volatile organic-chemical substances,” says WKI Professor Tunga Salthammer. “But one essential property of these ultra-fine particles is their volatility, which indicates that we are not looking at toner dust.”

Toner deaf

The scientists confirmed their conclusions by testing a range of printers without any paper or toner in them – and still detected the ultra-fine particles.

They concluded that the particles were coming from the printers’ fixing unit – a component that heats up as high as 220°C during the printing process in order to fix toner particles on the paper.

Ultra-fine particles are produced by many household gadgets that have an electric motor or heating element – such as toasters – but little research has been done into their possible toxicity.

In any case, say Fraunhofer boffins, there’s nothing to be done: “Our investigations show that as the ultra-fine particles are not emitted from a specific part of the printer, but also from the paper output, filters can only have a limited effect.”