June 2003 (updated)**

The Magicolor printers will be retired. We are taking delivery of a Minolta CF2002 "turbo" colour printer. See the link for more info on it.

I have two of these colour laser printers that I look after.

(shown w/duplex unit & extra input tray)

Back in 1998 when we bought our first QMS MC2 printer they were more-or-less "state of the art". They typically print 4 pages per minute in full-colour and 16 pages per minute black. If you use less than 4 colours in the process printing can be faster, such as black with a single colour highlight.

www.qms.com

Here are some of the disadvantages of these units:

• fairly noisy compared to Tektronix 740/750 competition
• a lot of costly consumables to replace
• toner cartridges only last 80% of stated capacity
• prices for toners have increased 25% since 1998
• average or below average reliability
• replacement parts are hard to find or take forever to receive
• OPC image cartridges are sometimes bad out of the box (new) and generally don't last as long as promised ($400 a pop)
• fuser cleaning rollers only last 25% of rated capacity when running repetitive print jobs such as 100's of brochures with the same image
• fuser unit not shown in consumables costs, refurbished fuser costs about $500 and lasts 75% of stated capacity
• OE paper input tray only holds 150 sheets
• "Desklaser" versions only have 600dpi, grainy compared to MC2 CX/CE and MC2+ with 2400dpi

Some of the advantages (if you're still reading this!):

• easy toner cartridge replacement
• fairly straight paper path
• paper jams easy to fix
• good paper handling from the OE input tray (thick stock, labels, etc)
• html browser consumables/statistics/jobs monitoring on non-desklaser versions
• mechanically fairly simple considering this is a 4 colour laser printer
• fairly upgradeable - memory and harddrive up to 384mb ram and 2.1GB laptop type IDE drive, desklaser up to 64mb ram. Ram is (now defunct) standard 72-pin EDO.
• very low initial purchase cost, especially on desklaser models
• 2400dpi mode is generally sharper than Tektronix 740/750 1200dpi models

Would I recommend these printers..... probably not, but I've found I can fix them myself 90% of the time and having two units helps with re-assembly when you need to take it nearly apart to fix something.

If you are looking for a serious colour laser printer have a look at the QMS MC3100 (same as the Brother HL4000CN, Xerox Phaser 6200 - all use a Fuji/Xerox print engine). At 16 pages per minute full colour it's quick. For a general cost-per-page print comparison the QMS MC2 at current consumables prices (10/2002) it works out to about 25 cents v.s. the Xerox 6200 of 15 cents (Canadian $).

Generally, manufacturers of printers raise their consumables (toners, oil, etc) pricing a couple years after bringing a new model to market. At least that's the case with QMS units which raises your printing costs considerably.

**EDIT: I'm going to take a look at the Minolta copier/print engines rather than true laser printers as the print engines such as the Minolta CF2001P come with an embedded print controller enabling them to be used as a colour printer but their consumables costs are 1/2 or less compared to colour laser printers from any manufacturer. There are also less parts to replace and in many cases no fuser oil. All these hidden consumables costs add up quickly. On colour copier engines toner is refilled by bottles so no cartridge to replace which is also a major cost savings. If you print more than 700-1000 colour pages per month you should seriously look at a colour copier engine.

See my review on the Minolta after using it since June 2003 here.

More links will be added here as time goes on so check back once in a while.

Click here for parts sources for QMS printers.

Click here for OPC Cartridge troubleshooting and repair tips.

Click here want to get the most pages out of each toner cartridge?

Click here for consumables sources and tips for MC2 printers.

Click here for a damaged fuser roller repair (if you still have your old fuser unit).

Click here for a how-to article on repairing both the upper and lower toner auger units that remove excess toner from the transfer drum. Is your printer puking toner powder out the bottom?

Click here for a how-to article on replacing the rubber lined transfer drum.

Click here for other QMS printer tips.

QMS, Desklaser, Magicolor are trademarks of Minolta-QMS.

Copyright 2001-2003  Peter Ferlow