Oce's rebranded Encad printers.

Since we already cover Encad printers directly from Encad and mention the identical printers which are relabeled by Kodak and Ilford we have not previously reviewed the same printers which are rebranded by Oce.

Oce sells mainly to large companies that want everything in their corporation taken care of by a single vendor. Thus Oce sells copiers, wide format scanners (from Contex), CAD printers and other office equipment. The main advantage of Oce is that it's RIP and inks may be a tad better than those of Encad itself since Oce owns Onyx PosterShop.

In the realm of CAD printers Oce does not appear to use Encad but rather a BubbleJet printhead design. Most large format printers simply do not give details of the head manufacturer but a dpi of 360 dpi with a designation of BubbleJet suggests a Canon product, hopefully not the same as the old Selex design. The Oce CAD printers are their models 5150 and 5200. FLAAR is setting up a new evaluation center so perhaps we can have the architecture department test these printers.

The Encad models by Oce include the Oce CS 5050 and CS 5070 (in 42" and 60" width models). We will eventually post all the latest model numbers such as their equivalent of the Encad 850.

Oce had an opportunity to purchase Encad two years ago but decided to attempt to develop their own printer. The Oce people I spoke with felt that the Lexmark printheads were already at the limits of their capability long ago.

But so far Oce's own printer has not appeared, despite rumors of its existence. Instead Oce bought all the printer brands of Gretag Imaging: Cymbolic Sciences LightJet, Arizona, RasterGraphics (which however was rather morbund before the purchase), ANAgraph, and others.

Most recently updated J une 1, 2002.
Previous updates: November 30, 2001.