Homebrew PCBs

Stefan Trethan wrote:
>>   And another serious advantage that I know about since a friend had 
>>one.
>>While the color sticks cost, the black sticks are *free*.
> 
> 
> 
> why that?
> you get them for free from the company or what?
> ??? very strange ???
> 
> ST
> 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3464865428&category=32787

   Just to give an idea, here's 12 black sticks starting at $10 with the shipping..

And as Steve was saying, they actually last a good time.  They're solid cubes, 
by the time you spread them out in a thin layer over a page they do a large 
number of pages.  They're much larger for some models than others though.

   For the free part, think about it.  You're buying the $1000 printer for it's 
color capability.  Without the free black you still have to buy a $300+ office 
laser for reasonable black printing costs.  With free black and only moderate 
black printing you don't need the seperate laser.  It's just wax and doesn't 
cost Tek/Xerox that much, yet it makes their printer much more attractive to a 
small office.  They make their money on the color, which is what the printer 
really sells for anyway.

   I don't remember all the details but think you had to order, took a few days 
or a week to get the replacement black but you could order ahead of time and 
never be without etc.  Actually looking at the adds on Ebay and remembering a 
bit, there were free blacks included in with the colors for the newer printers 
too.  But pretty sure when you were running low you could simply call and have 2 
blacks sent to you as well, lifetime free black sticks were part of the 
printer's selling features.

   Getting a laser to work will still make far more sense for most, but these 
are neat printers on their own.  Actually I have some wax from them just for 
that, was for looking at melting them with a hot glue gun or similar and drawing 
resist on CNC.  Laser will be 10 times less trouble.  But with the wax the 
phaser's printed pages look as though they are from a magazine even on cheap 
paper, they are very good for color printing.

Alan