This article (published in 2018) really conveyed the joy of engineering. It also frankly made me want to buy Xerox for my next printer: I've noticed a huge amount of similarity between different brands and I would not be surprised at all if they have a large amount of "shared IP" if diagnosing a jam requires a team of high-end researchers like as described.
Printing is an odd business. My grandmother was a typographer -- a layout artist, in the days before desktop publishing -- and had a unique combination of artistic skills and highly technical ones. The fundamental tension between those two aspects, together with an ever-present focus on minimising cost, makes for a cut-throat marketplace of multi-domain experts. It's an art we should celebrate. I took great pleasure in printing my PhD thesis, and the person who did the book binding both noticed and appreciated it, and as a result used machines and processes developed in the late 19th century to artistically produce the 10 hardback copies I had to have made. It's a wonderful mix of craft and care and I think a very misunderstood industry.
[DRM'd inkjet printers can go screw themselves, however]
this distinction may be related to computers putting typesetters out of the job, leaving just the font designers to claim the title “typographer” (just a hunch)
She called herself a typographer and a layout artist -- she had a qualification in typography and set the title font used for an obscure newspaper, the Antiques Trade Gazette, where she worked for many years. Although she's dead, I'd use the term that she did for describing her own job!
I always wondered how the bookbinder in town stayed in business, must be some arrangement with the university down the road requiring these hardcopies xD
Also had to chuckle, even though it is not the same thing, because it reminded me of the first time I experienced a paper avalanche. Several years into my adult life, somehow unprocessed papers and bills had stacked up so high that they went sliding into an avalanche, burying other stuff beneath them. It somehow felt like a milestone in life.
Long ago I worked support at an advertising firm and we had a lot of color laser copiers with attached RIP engines for printing out not-quite proofs and whatnot. (Sidenote: Terrible software to have to support. FieryRIP can eat a bag of dicks. In general the RIP engines, which ran Win 2k I think...just never seemed to work right, I think lots of print queue issues, and calibration was a PITA?)
Out of the middle of nowhere we suddenly started getting jams on the machines. It was like an infection.
Turns out that some genius decided they'd save the company money (which it didn't need to do, it was rolling in dough) by switching to a cheaper paper. The new stuff ended up in the machines around the building in a seemingly random order.
Xerox sent a tech out. He inspected and cleaned some rollers, then concluded that our paper sucked. Proved it by printing ~500 pages on good paper he'd brought, and then using a ream of the old paper.
If your laser printer is mis-feeding or jamming a lot, buy better paper.
Also, humidity can be important. We had a "proof printer" room where the expensive color printers were that generated the actual "proofs" before stuff went off to get printed by the thousands-to-millions or shown to clients, and there was a household humidifier in the corner to keep things from getting too dry in the winter.
Paper quality is so huge - spending $4 more at Staples or whatever, amortized across 500 sheets, is a no-brainer even (especially) in a cheap home printer.
My 2 least favorite things about computers: fonts and printing. Even in 2021, printing still sucks. Sure, we've decided we want to print on so many different types of printing surfaces, that modern printer manufactures probably dream of the days only printing on white paper. Makes me wish for a laser printer with an option to use dot matrix fan folded style paper feed. At least you know it's going to pull straight.
The 90s called, and they want their tech back. Good gawd those are horrendeously large.Also, I think that page you linked might be from the 90s as well. Every link results in a 404. At least their 404 page has live links to get to current website. Any website that has a Request Quote instead of a listed price just means move along for me. I also saw no info on expendables like paper costs or toner costs. I just don't understand having so much basic information missing from a website. It's almost as if the companies like this are telling you "you don't want to do business with us".
Thanks for the link though. At least I now know these exist, and I can one day be a hero in a meeting with this knowledge.
Printing will probably suck more and more as we are moving away from paper.
OSes like macOS had entire graphics stacks tailored for printing support (quartz uses pdf as its intermediate format). I bet newer OSes will provide much weaker support for printing
Fonts? You must not be old enough to remember serial port then.
Serial ports, and in particular modems connected to said ports, was the second worst thing I know in computing. At least I rarely have to deal with either of them anymore.
I worked at Xerox during this period and know and/or worked with all of the people in this article. Dealing with paper is a colossal PITA but it's why printers and copiers exist so you have no choice. Xerox's strategy of building platforms that could be scaled helped somewhat but paper can act differently at different speeds so it's not a guarantee that scaling won't bring new challenges.
Many years ago I worked on a small 14 ppm machine that was intended for worldwide distribution. We spent considerable time testing in "hot/wet" environmental chambers because in Brazil, where Xerox had a large factory and sold domestically, people would set up copiers on the sidewalk and sell copying to passersby. Damp paper is very different than dry paper and we had to be robust against it.
Whoa! Never realised that was a thing, and I am thankful for you and your colleagues work.
I am brazillian, and the reason we have those sidewalk copy shops is that a large amount of government bureaucracy (and we have a huge amount of these, according to the "ease to do business" there was years where we had the dubious honor of having most bureaucracy of all countries in the world) has paper copies of documents mandatory many government offices do not make copies for you but will happily tell you the nearby shops with Xerox machines (literally, here Xerox and photocopier is same thing).
Even basic things like: open bank account, close bank account, get internet, or a new phone, require at least a Xerox copy of a bill in your name to prove you live nearby (yes, this sometimes result in circular reference, like power company wanting a power bill to start the contract).
For more complex things like opening a company it is not rare to visit in person 5 different government offices taking with you 50+ pages of Xeroxed stuff (I know this from personal experience. Also closing a company is similarly nuts).
So without these machines working perfectly we would all be screwed, sometimes a humid paper jam could mean you having to wait months to get a new appointment with government office to solve your problem. Or outright epic fines (for example if you needed copies to comply with regulations or taxes)
Likewise I worked at a company whose business revolved around mail processing and high-speed paper handling. The problems caused by an ink that can dry fast enough to not smear when you're printing 200 pieces/minute drove a ridiculous amount of software design.
OTOH, it was some of the most fun I've had at work.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 60.1 ms ] threadPrinting is an odd business. My grandmother was a typographer -- a layout artist, in the days before desktop publishing -- and had a unique combination of artistic skills and highly technical ones. The fundamental tension between those two aspects, together with an ever-present focus on minimising cost, makes for a cut-throat marketplace of multi-domain experts. It's an art we should celebrate. I took great pleasure in printing my PhD thesis, and the person who did the book binding both noticed and appreciated it, and as a result used machines and processes developed in the late 19th century to artistically produce the 10 hardback copies I had to have made. It's a wonderful mix of craft and care and I think a very misunderstood industry.
[DRM'd inkjet printers can go screw themselves, however]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography
Also had to chuckle, even though it is not the same thing, because it reminded me of the first time I experienced a paper avalanche. Several years into my adult life, somehow unprocessed papers and bills had stacked up so high that they went sliding into an avalanche, burying other stuff beneath them. It somehow felt like a milestone in life.
Out of the middle of nowhere we suddenly started getting jams on the machines. It was like an infection.
Turns out that some genius decided they'd save the company money (which it didn't need to do, it was rolling in dough) by switching to a cheaper paper. The new stuff ended up in the machines around the building in a seemingly random order.
Xerox sent a tech out. He inspected and cleaned some rollers, then concluded that our paper sucked. Proved it by printing ~500 pages on good paper he'd brought, and then using a ream of the old paper.
If your laser printer is mis-feeding or jamming a lot, buy better paper.
Also, humidity can be important. We had a "proof printer" room where the expensive color printers were that generated the actual "proofs" before stuff went off to get printed by the thousands-to-millions or shown to clients, and there was a household humidifier in the corner to keep things from getting too dry in the winter.
I get this one on Subscribe and Save:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000H9HMJ6/
The 120gsm quality and surface finish is amazing compared to ordinary paper. I pay £7 for a 500 page ream and it's well worth it.
My 2 least favorite things about computers: fonts and printing. Even in 2021, printing still sucks. Sure, we've decided we want to print on so many different types of printing surfaces, that modern printer manufactures probably dream of the days only printing on white paper. Makes me wish for a laser printer with an option to use dot matrix fan folded style paper feed. At least you know it's going to pull straight.
https://www.pecoinc.com/products/mp/index.htm
Thanks for the link though. At least I now know these exist, and I can one day be a hero in a meeting with this knowledge.
OSes like macOS had entire graphics stacks tailored for printing support (quartz uses pdf as its intermediate format). I bet newer OSes will provide much weaker support for printing
Serial ports, and in particular modems connected to said ports, was the second worst thing I know in computing. At least I rarely have to deal with either of them anymore.
Many years ago I worked on a small 14 ppm machine that was intended for worldwide distribution. We spent considerable time testing in "hot/wet" environmental chambers because in Brazil, where Xerox had a large factory and sold domestically, people would set up copiers on the sidewalk and sell copying to passersby. Damp paper is very different than dry paper and we had to be robust against it.
I am brazillian, and the reason we have those sidewalk copy shops is that a large amount of government bureaucracy (and we have a huge amount of these, according to the "ease to do business" there was years where we had the dubious honor of having most bureaucracy of all countries in the world) has paper copies of documents mandatory many government offices do not make copies for you but will happily tell you the nearby shops with Xerox machines (literally, here Xerox and photocopier is same thing).
Even basic things like: open bank account, close bank account, get internet, or a new phone, require at least a Xerox copy of a bill in your name to prove you live nearby (yes, this sometimes result in circular reference, like power company wanting a power bill to start the contract).
For more complex things like opening a company it is not rare to visit in person 5 different government offices taking with you 50+ pages of Xeroxed stuff (I know this from personal experience. Also closing a company is similarly nuts).
So without these machines working perfectly we would all be screwed, sometimes a humid paper jam could mean you having to wait months to get a new appointment with government office to solve your problem. Or outright epic fines (for example if you needed copies to comply with regulations or taxes)
In case it was missed, the word for "photocopy" is "xerox" (like often "kleenex" is the word for "tissue").
OTOH, it was some of the most fun I've had at work.