bits & bytes; The Truth About Xerox “2400 dpi”

Have a customer confused by the advertised DPI Resolution or Bit Depth of Xerox DocuColor production color systems? Most of the new DocuColor models advertise that they offer 2400dpi.

Here are more details on what they are talking about:

The print controller on the Xerox (be it Fiery, Creo or Xerox FreeFlow) sends 600x600dpi at 8 bits per pixel to the print engine, therefore the process is NOT truly a 2400dpi process.

• The print engine uses VCSEL technology which stands for Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser, meaning that 32 beams of laser light are used to create the image using 8 micron sized toner particles.

• The print engine takes the instructions from the print controller for one dot, and divides it into 16 quadrants. For example, in an area that is supposed to show 25% cyan, rather than dimming the laser to create the needed fill in the pixel, the Xerox VCSEL engine places a pattern in the 16 quadrants to simulate the 25% fill using a screening method.

In summary, each 8 bit 600dpi pixel byte sent by the computer through the RIP print controller is converted in the Fuji-made engine to 1 bit 2400dpi binary pixels.

- This may be a bit outdated, I am curious who might have more infomation on this subject. Go ahead and help us understand the math!