Looking at the Status of Original Factory from Toner Technology-Deep Science Popularization in Toner Industry

Since I entered the toner industry in 2000, I have contacted and visited all the toner manufacturing plants with more than 500 tons in the world, including all the original factories (equipment manufacturers), and had in-depth communication with many engineers including Canon Ricoh Xerox Kemei. Seeing the dying of Toshiba Sharp, Samsung's fortitude, and even Canon, which is famous and profitable, makes wedding clothes for compatible markets and swings patent sledgehammers... I have been thinking about a question, how did the original factory's position in the industry today come into being and what determines it? After going to Japan this time to contact some key material suppliers of the original factory, I finally found the answer: now the status of each original factory in the industry is determined by the level of toner research and development and manufacturing they have mastered, in addition to their equipment. Because the original factory now designs different corresponding machines according to different toner, the technical level of toner first determines the image quality of printing and copying, and second determines the technical difficulty of making this toner in the compatible market.

According to these two evaluation criteria, I will now more than a dozen original factories according to their "birth and blood" into three camps: the first camp is used to make household appliancesSharp, Toshiba, Panasonic, Samsung, Brother, OKIand so on; the second camp is born and computer, semiconductor materials relatedHP, Lexmark and KyoceraThe third camp is related to optical photography.Canon, Ricoh, Comet, Xerox. Generally speaking, the first camp has the lowest technical level and can only be used as printers or medium-and low-speed copiers. Their carbon powder is the best and is most affected by the compatible market. In addition to optical photography technology, each camp has mastered different original chemical production technologies in the process of transforming from physical method to chemical method. They not only produce printers but also copiers, it not only produces office photocopiers but also produces high-speed and ultra-high-speed production photocopiers. The highest technology of printing and copying from machines to toner is in the hands of these four major machine manufacturers. Currently, this camp is the leader in this industry!

The reason why the first camp is that the technical level of the original factory is not high, from studying their toner,No matter whether it is physical method or chemical method, there is no original toner technology, and many of them do not have the ability to produce toner but ask professional toner factories to do so.If the brother is ZEON OEM, OKI isMITSUBISHIOEM, Panasonic isKaoOEM, Samsung's physical toner is OEM, both printing speed and picture quality are quite different from those of the second and third camps. The technical level of many toner factories in the compatible market even exceeds that of these original factories, because the technical level of the original toner is not high, and the competition between the compatible markets in this area is the most intense. (Although Samsung spent US $0.1 billion to set up a chemical toner factory with a production capacity of 3000 tons, it can only use less than 300 tons of it every year, and the production cost per kilogram of toner is as high as US $60/kg. Looking at Samsung's financial report, it will be found that printing and copying this annual sales volume of US $3 billion is only a few million US dollars.)

In the second camp, HP's own non-toner production technology is all manufactured by Canon or other factories,HP is a computer manufacturer with strong software development and market channel layout capabilities.With this advantage, HP has occupied almost half of the printer market. Its toner is much better than that of the first camp in terms of image quality because it is produced by Canon in the third camp. However, because Canon's toner has the lowest technical threshold in the third camp, HP has occupied half of the printer market, but the sales compatibility market of toner accounts for 70%, only 30% of the original. I have a point of view that without HP, there would be no such huge compatible market. Therefore, in recent years, some original factories have raised patent sticks to block the provocation of compatible market, because compatible market not only moves its milk, but also wants to lead its cows away.

Lexmark in the second camp is the one I am most familiar with and understand in the original factory. I have been there more than ten times. I know almost all the technicians who do toner research in Lexmark. Lexmark also does not have very high toner technology. There is nothing special about physical methods. Chemical methods cost tens of millions of dollars fromAVICIAI bought it, and the dispersion of emulsion and pigment is not capable of production. I also found an outside factory to make it. However, Lexmark, formerly IBM's printer department, made the cartridge's chips as difficult to crack as the US defense level. What's more, they used their understanding of the US patent law to indicate on each cartridge that you bought a product with a favorable price, so this cartridge cannot be recycled again,With patentReject all brand new cartridges from the United States. What I admire most in the second camp is Kyocera. Although Kyocera makes physical carbon powder, what they do is positively charged physical carbon powder. When they design carbon powderIt is very difficult for compatible manufacturers to make kyocera's carbon powder by designing the window of the technical parameters of the wax and resin materials very narrow and signing exclusive supply agreements with these raw material suppliers.In the original factory dominated by physical carbon powder, Kyocera's carbon powder compatible market accounts for less than 10%. Kyocera's profitability in the original factory is relatively good.

Canon toner has the lowest technical level in the third camp, so Canon's machines are concentrated in printers and office-type medium and low-speed copiers. In order to make up for the shortage of production type, it bought OCE in Europe. Canon toner is also the original factory in this camp that is most impacted by the compatible market, because the technical threshold of Canon toner is not high in both physical and chemical methods. Canon also knows that the technical difficulty of its toner is low, so it mainly raises the threshold by controlling the raw material suppliers. Canon is the most troublesome company among the Japanese toner raw material suppliers. As long as Canon evaluates a certain raw material of the raw material supplier is good, Canon will put it the next day.Write a new patent to prevent other toner factories from using it.This material, while kidnapping raw material suppliers.

Ke Mei is the second most technical level of toner in this camp to Ricoh and Xerox. Although it is the second generation of chemical technology, theyTechnology of Wax-in-EmulsionTo the extreme, this technologyHigh demand for equipment, and putExtremely narrow wax parameter window design, coupled with theircarrier coating technology, so Ke Mei's carrier-added copy powder is very difficult to deal with even old toner factories such as Bachuan and Mitsubishi. Not to mention the high-speed production copier 1051, even the medium and low-speed color 220 and 224, the physical powder of peers is also difficult to do well. In order to improve the difficulty of compatible market entry, Ke Mei not only adds carriers to the color toner of some machines, even several different carriers with very different magnetic properties from the core material to the cladding are added. Therefore, Ke Mei's production copier, whether black or color, is second only to Xerox's industry brand and status.

Ricoh'sPXP polyester type tonerTheoretically speaking, it is the most suitable for making the most perfect toner, but the process is too long, the investment is too large, the production cost is high, and the production is extremely difficult to control.Ricoh's own original powder will have problems matching the machine., so Ricoh's position is very embarrassing, high-end competition but Xerox Kemei, low-end competition but Canon.