What’s New with the Xerox Primelink C9200 Series?

As the inventor of the electrophotographic imaging process, eponymously known as xerography, it’s no surprise that Xerox continues to develop and refine its offering in this part of the digital print space. Addressing both the office environment and the light production end of the professional print sector, the PrimeLink C9200 family offers print, scan, and fax capabilities at a choice of productivity levels, together with advances in print quality and application flexibility.

The new range was announced at PRINTING United in the US in September 2024 and replaces the C9000 line. According to Kevin O’Donnell, marketing manager at Xerox UK, it’s designed to be highly configurable, offering a choice of print speeds with improved imaging quality backed by automated workflow software, dedicated apps for specific functions, and a range of expanded paper feed and inline finishing options. The company highlights that the series is made with space-saving designs, with O’Donnell also noting that the presses can be run from a single three-pin plug.

Target markets for the range are all entry-level production sectors, including retail quick print shops, digital and commercial print businesses, corporate/SMB, and public sector in-plant operations.

The three new PrimeLink models are the C9265, C9275, and C9281, respectively offering 65, 75, and 81 A4 pages per minute, or 30, 34, and 38 SRA3 sheets. Both sets of figures are for simplex printing. Auto-duplexing is supported for stocks of up to 350gsm, and materials from 52 to 400gsm can be handled. This includes envelopes, embossed and linen, and other textured papers, without a special set-up, plus synthetic materials and label stocks.

Front-to-back registration is claimed to be ±0.5mm, which is more in the professional production category than typical office machines would offer. Banner printing of sheets up to 1,300mm in length is also supported. Paper capacities of up to 7,500 sheets are possible; the standard configuration is 3,500. The duty cycle is quoted at 300,000 sheets per month maximum, with typical monthly volumes ranging between 10,000 and 60,000 sheets.

Embracing LED

The print engines, which are manufactured by Fujifilm, use an LED-based imaging system plus a fine EA (emulsion aggregate) toner similar to that employed in Xerox’s popular Iridesse 120ppm production press. Collectively these are said to provide ‘best-in-class performance with outstanding fine-line detail, image colour transitions, and colour accuracy’.

Xerox doesn’t make any specific claim about colour gamut, but the LED imaging system – which uses LEDs rather than a laser to ‘write’ the image to the charged drum before printing – offers a resolution of 2400 x 2400dpi, which is a first in a Xerox digital press. Combined with ten-bit per colour image processing this should indeed enable very fine detail to be rendered, as well as supporting smooth colour graduations. Colour accuracy should be aided by a media library that covers common stock types, but there are no built-in custom colour profiling capabilities at this level.

O’Donnell points out that the LED writing system is also both mechanically simpler, which should bode well for maintenance and reliability over time, and less power-hungry than laser imaging, hence the ability to run the press from a standard 13A socket.

Inline finishing options range from basic stacking and stapling, hole punching, creasing, and two-sided trimming, to a booklet-maker that supports finished sizes from 182 x 182mm up to 330 x 488mm on stock of up to 256gsm. There is also SquareFold trimmer module and an inserter.

Getting the Right Colour

The Fujifilm engines are complemented by a Xerox ecosystem of workflow and other software, starting with a choice of DFEs. The standard offering is Xerox’s Integrated Color Server for the PrimeLink C9200 series, but there are also options for Fiery FS600 controllers, which add Fiery Edge colour profiling technology. This is said to provide more accurate printing of Pantone and other brand colours, irrespective of the originating document type, and so should be able to process files correctly created in Microsoft Office applications as well as those from the more professionally oriented Adobe suite.

There are some novel capabilities here, including scan-to-cloud, auto redaction, and auto translation

There is also a Xerox-exclusive Fiery JobExpert preset capability that automatically configures optimal colour and printer properties; this can be invoked when submitting jobs via Xerox’s FreeFlow Core workflow software, which is supplied as standard with all the C9200 presses.

The Xerox software doesn’t stop there, either. There is Predictive AI for Production Print and Multifunction Print, which anticipates potential machine problems, allowing them to be addressed proactively, thus avoiding unscheduled downtime.

Useful Tools

The presses also support the Xerox Extensible Interface Platform, which provides access to the Xerox App Gallery. This is a portal to a growing collection of chargeable dedicated apps that simplify and automate a range of repetitive and time-consuming tasks in document scanning or creation, data handling, and printing, complementing the capabilities of the press.

There are some novel capabilities here, including scan-to-cloud, auto redaction, and auto translation. The latter allows printed documents to be fed into the scanner, translated (using Microsoft online translation services) and either printed or uploaded as digital documents. Target languages include such diverse options such as Polish, Welsh, and Mandarin Chinese.

Purchasers of the PrimeLink C9200 series also get included free the XMPie omnichannel authoring software, plus more than 50 professional templates to cover a range of variable data-driven print and online communications materials, such as calendars, cards, and posters.

Digital toner presses are a very well-established category, so it’s to be expected that enhancements here will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But in this case there seems to be a well-thought-out set of improvements that add to the still-improving image quality and broad substrate flexibility of toner print with increased application capability, especially with some of the more unusual offerings in the Xerox App Gallery.

If you’re looking to support a mixed set of work, to open up some possible new revenue streams, or add in-house capabilities, and don’t need the production muscle of the faster machines, the Xerox C9200 looks like a neat and nimble option.

Statistics

Speeds: 65/75/81 ppm
Media weights: Up to 400gsm
Banner media: Up to 1,300mm
Average monthly print volume: 10,000 to 60,000 pages