Review of Kodak 8500 Dye Sublimation Printer

Printer Specifications

• Printing process: Thermal dye diffusion
• Image quality: Continuous tone, 314 dpi
• Print time: Less than 75 seconds
• Maximum imageable area: 8x10 inches (203 x 254 cm)
• Media capacity: 50 prints input and output

I bought this printer new off eBay for about $200, it had a list price of about a thousand dollars when it first came out in mid 2002, the one I got was manufactured May 2004.

When this printer was delivered, the delivery driver dropped it from about a foot high on to the asphalt; I made a wincing awkward smile inward breathing face. This would be the first of many frustrations. Luckily there was a lot of styrofoam padding and the printer was in perfect cosmetic condition. That same day I purchased the ribbons and paper packs from Helix for another $200, these can be purchased for about half on eBay when the are available, but I was anxious to try it out immediately so I forked over the money. The cost per print comes to about $2 including tax.

I've been pretty happy with my 64-bit version of Windows XP. The only time a problem occurs is when I need to install drivers for older hardware... like this printer. Windows did a fine job of recognizing the printer when I plugged it in, but it would never correctly install the drivers. After trying for several hours to no avail, I tried a feasible but rather roundabout way to get the printer to work. I installed a standard 32-bit copy of XP in VMware (software that can create a virtual computer.) Fortunately, the virtual machine recognized the printer and actually correctly installed the print drivers.

So now that the printer was installed correctly (on the virtual computer) I began to make some test prints. First print, the 8500 started whirring away and sucked the paper in, printed the first layer (yellow) then BAM! A paper jam/ribbon problem was reported on screen. Second print, same thing. So I opened this bad boy up, took out the ribbon, reseated it back in its holder and put it back in. Guess what? Another yellow paper jam. So I opened it up again looked at the ribbon, took it out again, put it back in again, made sure everything clicked into place and closed the lid. Now it just said something about the ribbon not being installed correctly, and wouldn't even print. Okay, so now I'm really frustrated, because it looks like I just wasted over $400. I opened the printer up again, took out the ribbon, looked at it really really closely, with a flashlight, and it looks fine. I then realized that part of the roller that the ribbon is on can come off; I took it off, put it back on and reseated the ribbon in the printer. Same error. I opened the printer again and this time pushed the piece on the end of the ribbon in as much as possible. I put everything back together and it finally made a full color print. I relaxed a little at this point.

The prints from this thing look pretty good, my only gripes are that highlights get a little blown out, and even when using the matte ribbon there is still about the same amount of metamerism as an inkjet print on luster paper. But with a well exposed photo the prints look great.