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Author Topic: L - Type prints  (Read 11988 times)

amolitor

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #40 on: November 28, 2018, 08:56:12 pm »

My read is a little different.

I see a small group of guys who got going on improving the print head around the time when digital C-printing looked like it might be The Thing, when inkjet was still kind of iffy. Inkjet, on the face of it is completely bonkers, you have to build all this actually very very tiny and very very precise mechanical crap and there are huge engineering problems and the inks and pigments, holy hell, what are we going to do THERE?

There was surely an interval when it was obvious to some people that building stuff relatively big and optically reducing as late as possible was the clear answer. These guys probably got going about that time.

Then it became slowly clear that inkjet was it. It was winning and it was going to win. Inkjet is, by the by, going to own all of it. I don't know where the engineering and adoption is, but inkjet is going to eventually crush offset as well. They are doing some seriously nutty stuff for big high speed offset-style presses.

So these guys were left there holding the bag as C-prints died under them. C-prints are a dead horse. They tried to ride it into the future. The last 2-3 years, assuming they were paying any attention at all they had a pretty good idea that this was not a good horse, but they held out hope for a niche, which did not materialize. By Oct 21 of this year they knew that if there was a niche someplace, they were not going to uncover it, and they probably had a good idea that there was no niche.

I didn't find their marketing as offensive as (the other) Andrew, I just found it sort of sad. Honestly, I would have been perfectly happy if they're found a niche, and I would have quietly characterized that niche as "suckers with too much money" but fortunes have been made on such niches.

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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #41 on: November 28, 2018, 08:57:58 pm »

Andrew R., the only thing I'm protesting is your unbecoming reaction to their demise - regardless of the "billions of colours" issue. I'll have nothing more to say about this aspect of the discussion.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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digitaldog

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #42 on: November 28, 2018, 09:00:42 pm »

To further add what amolitor stated, C-printing is dirty and polluting. Ink jet isn't totally immune but a heck of a lot cleaner to the environment.
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digitaldog

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #43 on: November 28, 2018, 09:01:43 pm »

Andrew R., the only thing I'm protesting is your unbecoming reaction to their demise - regardless of the "billions of colours" issue. I'll have nothing more to say about this aspect of the discussion.
As I have already said, I'm fine with your first point above and super fine with the 2nd!  :P
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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #44 on: November 28, 2018, 09:06:56 pm »


Then it became slowly clear that inkjet was it. It was winning and it was going to win. Inkjet is, by the by, going to own all of it. I don't know where the engineering and adoption is, but inkjet is going to eventually crush offset as well. They are doing some seriously nutty stuff for big high speed offset-style presses.



Yes you have a good point; an interesting case in point is the Canon "DreamLabo 5000" (https://www.canon-europe.com/for_work/business-products/production-printing/production_photo_printing/dl5000/). This thing is a beast - the quality it produces is simply amazing, as are the throughput specs - beats the pants off what we can get from just about any of those book printing services in the contemporary market. The problem is that the investment is so high that there are very, very few outlets in North America using them. But this will evolve. (It may be more commonly found in Europe, I don't know.)
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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amolitor

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #45 on: November 28, 2018, 10:03:36 pm »

Yup. Fixed full width heads. Holy crap, let that sink in a second. Once you've figured out how to BUILD these ridiculous objects, huge swathes of mechanical problems simply vanish and all you really need is paper handling which, while no cake walk, is  a thoroughly understood problem.

1000 A4 sheets an hour. Double-sided. With other specs that look a lot like any good quality photo printer (7 inks, 1200dpi, etc).

The paper is moving at 4-6 inches per second. It's not a newspaper press, but it's alarmingly fast.

If you're willing to go down to 600dpi and just CMYK inks, you can get into the VarioPrint line which will do almost 300 pages a minute. Duplex. Pricing? Well, they say it has "low Total Cost of Ownership" which means "holy shit that's a lot of zeros"
« Last Edit: November 28, 2018, 10:37:07 pm by amolitor »
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bjanes

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #46 on: November 29, 2018, 07:17:19 am »

Yes you have a good point; an interesting case in point is the Canon "DreamLabo 5000" (https://www.canon-europe.com/for_work/business-products/production-printing/production_photo_printing/dl5000/). This thing is a beast - the quality it produces is simply amazing, as are the throughput specs - beats the pants off what we can get from just about any of those book printing services in the contemporary market. The problem is that the investment is so high that there are very, very few outlets in North America using them. But this will evolve. (It may be more commonly found in Europe, I don't know.)

Mark,

I did look at your link to the Canon printer and saw that is uses dye based colorants. Years ago Epson and others used dye based inks with their inkjet printers and encountered severe fading on exposure to light. Then they went to pigment based ink and the prints are said to last 200 years. Has dye based ink improved since then?

Regards,

Bill
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elliot_n

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #47 on: November 29, 2018, 08:27:15 am »

Mark,

I did look at your link to the Canon printer and saw that is uses dye based colorants. Years ago Epson and others used dye based inks with their inkjet printers and encountered severe fading on exposure to light. Then they went to pigment based ink and the prints are said to last 200 years. Has dye based ink improved since then?

Regards,

Bill

How about offset printing with its big tubs of thick gooey C, M, Y and K inks. Are those inks dye, pigment, or something else?
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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #48 on: November 29, 2018, 08:35:11 am »

Mark,

I did look at your link to the Canon printer and saw that is uses dye based colorants. Years ago Epson and others used dye based inks with their inkjet printers and encountered severe fading on exposure to light. Then they went to pigment based ink and the prints are said to last 200 years. Has dye based ink improved since then?

Regards,

Bill

I removed my response because I used wrong information - sorry, too early in the morning; I'll revert when I've got it right!
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #49 on: November 29, 2018, 08:57:18 am »

Mark,

............ Has dye based ink improved since then?

Regards,

Bill

Hi Bill,

OK, back again on this one: the short answer is yes. The dyes have improved a lot since the early days of inkjet printing. To take Canon's ChromaLife 100 inkset in the Pro-100 printer using Canon Luster paper with no coating as an example, Aardenburg results indicate that for 51 "Wilhelm Display Years" (100 Megalux hours of testing) you can expect about 80% I* rating , which Aardenburg would judge to be "good" - not excellent, but good. If you are subscribed, you can consult the Aardenburg report - much more data than I'm mentioning here.

Canon, from what I could find, does not publish the name of the inkset used in the Dreamolab 5000 and I could find no longevity data for it, but I would be inclined to expect the performance should be at least similar - if only because in this day and age, service providers using such an expensive piece of equipment would want to market respectable longevity expectations.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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digitaldog

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #50 on: November 29, 2018, 12:41:18 pm »

How about offset printing with its big tubs of thick gooey C, M, Y and K inks. Are those inks dye, pigment, or something else?
Toner based as found in products like HP Indigo, Nexpress, Xeikon. We call em 'digital presses' or 'on demand' presses. They have advantages and some nasty disadvantages Ink Jet's don't.
Every get output from Apple's products in the past, or Blurb books out of Lightroom, you've seen this kind of output.
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elliot_n

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #51 on: November 29, 2018, 02:32:04 pm »

Toner based as found in products like HP Indigo, Nexpress, Xeikon. We call em 'digital presses' or 'on demand' presses. They have advantages and some nasty disadvantages Ink Jet's don't.
Every get output from Apple's products in the past, or Blurb books out of Lightroom, you've seen this kind of output.

I was asking about traditional offset printing. What is the ink - dye, pigment or something else?
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digitaldog

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #52 on: November 29, 2018, 02:35:15 pm »

I was asking about traditional offset printing. What is the ink - dye, pigment or something else?
Usually ink with a pigment component but 'offset printing' covers a massive range of possibilities and products.
http://sites.tech.uh.edu/digitalmedia/materials/3350/Offset_Inks.pdf
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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #53 on: November 29, 2018, 02:46:45 pm »

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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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elliot_n

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #54 on: November 29, 2018, 02:55:26 pm »

Usually ink with a pigment component but 'offset printing' covers a massive range of possibilities and products.
http://sites.tech.uh.edu/digitalmedia/materials/3350/Offset_Inks.pdf

Thanks. Interesting text. Offset inks are pigment inks.
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elliot_n

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #55 on: November 29, 2018, 02:57:42 pm »

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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #56 on: November 29, 2018, 03:05:30 pm »

Could be - that's the one I found by doing a search in order to answer your question and it seemed relevant so I posted it.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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TommyWeir

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #57 on: December 01, 2018, 03:54:50 pm »

Too bad about Lumajet folding.  A friend had a set of black and whites and another of color work printed with them.  Stellar work and the presentation boxes were not too shabby either.   I had them in mind for future projects.

I've been shopping around for high end print services and been recently impressed by Picto in Paris.  Those of you on this side of the Atlantic might check them out - https://www.pictoonline.fr/en/   The offer piezographic printing, I've not found a service who does that in Ireland or the UK so got sample prints which were remarkable, revealed a lot more detail in the shadows than my humble Epson P600 with Epson inks.

edwardoo

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #58 on: April 15, 2019, 03:13:09 pm »

 I much prefer to make my own prints, so this is not a 'perfect' solution for me but it my be very useful for some of my clients.CCleaner Happy Wheels VLC
« Last Edit: April 15, 2019, 04:43:34 pm by edwardoo »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: L - Type prints
« Reply #59 on: April 15, 2019, 03:25:23 pm »

I much prefer to make my own prints, so this is not a 'perfect' solution for me but it my be very useful for some of my clients.

Except that they are out of business.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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