Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: NikosR on March 30, 2007, 03:21:19 am
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Epson has announced new inkjet head technology improving on existing Micro Piezo heads. The new heads are supposed to provide higher physical nozzle density (360 dpi from 180 dpi) amongst other advantages (would this mean native resolution would increase from 360dpi to 720dpi?).
I have no clue what effect this will have on any future Epson products and when such products will be available, but it is interesting to note that, I quote 'Volume production of next-generation Micro Piezo print heads that feature these elements as actuators will be launched in April 2007'.
Maybe someone can decipher this last sentence with respect to when new printers using this technology will be announced.
The announcement:
http://www.epson.co.jp/e/newsroom/2007/news_20070327.htm (http://www.epson.co.jp/e/newsroom/2007/news_20070327.htm)
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What that means is, Epson is going after the large format market which they have not done in the past. You will probally see a much larger line of printers from them in the near future. This is the first time they used the term"Solvent Ink" in any announcement which is a good indication that their ink will be usable outdoors. The new head technology will also give them speed.
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I heard recently from a reputable Epson dealer that Epson will be announcing a printer larger than the 9800 within the year. This rumour might bode well with what you're saying.
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Seeing as solvent inks are quickly being outlawed all over the world, I find the UV cure portion most interesting.
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Seeing as solvent inks are quickly being outlawed all over the world, I find the UV cure portion most interesting.
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There are two types of Solvent Ink, full solvent and Eco Solvent which is used by Roland, Mutoh and Mimacki in their current production large format printers which all use Epson head technology. The Eco Solvent is made by Epson for these companies and it has been in use since 2003. You may be right about the full Sovent being outlawed, but the Eco Solvent is here to stay.
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We'll have to see about the eco solvent, as it is still not very eco friendly compared to aqueous inks. But then again the UV cure stuff is still pretty bad. The thing with the UV cure is that you should be able to print onto anything without dot gain. The UV LED market has really helped to speed up the UV cure inkjet industry, and hopefully we'll see this in lesser expensive printers.
Everyone I've contacted that makes cure UV inks (and aqueous inkjet inks) has said that current Epson heads will die an early death if used with the current UV inks. The UV inks are also a much thicker (more viscous) ink, so the current Epson heads have difficulties with them. Most of the current UV cure printers use fairly large drop sizes, but if you cure as the head passes then there is little dot gain. These "high power" UV LEDs are allowing the light source to ride on the head for this immediate "cure", before this you had to run fiber optic cable to the head which is costly and bulky. Now when I say immediate cure, what I really mean is that the LED provides enough light to stick the ink to the paper, then the paper passes to a stronger light source for final curing. If the current Epson heads were able to use these UV cure inks, I would have built a printer with LEDs attached to the printhead for a project that I wanted to try. Dupont makes many different shades of ink from white to black, and just about every other color you might need (and were very helpful when I was looking into this about a year ago). Pretty much all of Dupont's UV cure inks are developed and manufactured in Europe where UV cure is fairly big compared to in the USA.
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Seeing as solvent inks are quickly being outlawed all over the world, I find the UV cure portion most interesting.
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I believe Brazil just outlawed these inks. That takes care of a large volume from South America.
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........Epson is going after the large format market which they have not done in the past.....
Marty,
Can you explain what you mean by this? What size are you talking about?
thanks
Brad
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Actually Seiko electronics has had some pretty big industrial/signage printers for a while.
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Can you say "Bill Boards"
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Marty,
Can you explain what you mean by this? What size are you talking about?
thanks
Brad
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I can not explain it since I am under a NDA, but you will find out later this month.
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My dealer made a passing remark about 1.5m so it could be DIN 2B or 60in.
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The 60 inch rumor has been around for about a year. They may be going after the 90+ inch market, especially if they can do UV cure inks.