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Author Topic: Griffins dye sub  (Read 985 times)

deanwork

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Griffins dye sub
« on: August 21, 2019, 08:20:45 pm »

Does anyone know if Griffin Editions in NY is using ChromaLuxe dye sub tech?

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dgberg

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2019, 08:32:39 pm »

Not sure what you mean by "Chromaluxe Dye Sub Technology"
No such thing as far as I know.
Chromaluxe is the manufacturer of the metal coated substrates, nothing more.
You can use any transfer paper and any dye sub printer it doesn't matter.
Not sure if they are using Chromaluxe panels or not but just about everyone does.
The question would be does Griffin Editions use Chromaluxe panels in their dye sub process.

deanwork

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2019, 10:44:38 pm »

I see. I don’t know anything about it other seeing where Wilhelm gave it a 65 year rating and made a big deal out of it. So it refers to the aluminum panels not any particular improved dye formulation.




Not sure what you mean by "Chromaluxe Dye Sub Technology"
No such thing as far as I know.
Chromaluxe is the manufacturer of the metal coated substrates, nothing more.
You can use any transfer paper and any dye sub printer it doesn't matter.
Not sure if they are using Chromaluxe panels or not but just about everyone does.
The question would be does Griffin Editions use Chromaluxe panels in their dye sub process.
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dgberg

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2019, 08:50:14 am »

That is correct. Chromaluxe is the name of the panels only. Made by Universal Woods out of Louisville, Ky.
This is where it gets tricky. Every different printer, ink and paper you use in the dye sublimation process changes the output. (Just like it does when printing on papers)
No such thing as an OEM ink. Except maybe the Sawgrass line on several printers they market with their ink. (SG400, SG800 and Virtuoso VJ628)
Sawgrass developed dye sublimation ink and had contracts with the large format printer companies, Epson was one of them.
There are now more then a half dozen. JTech, Ink Owl and Sawgrass to name a few. Just about everyone doing Wide format dye sub does anything possible to steer away from Sawgrass.
They had a monopoly on the market for years and just raked their consumers over the coals.
When I had my 4880 the cost was $1.50 a ml. I finally purchased Ink Owl and refillable carts. 
At .15 a ml, ran a new profile and the output was just as good or better then Sawgrass at 10 times the savings. (Longevity tests are still ongoing but look real good.)
Other then the Sawgrass and wide format Epsons you mostly have Epson printers converted to dye sublimation like my P8000.
I would be interested in reading the article to see what ink, printer and paper was used for the test.

Just read the article. They are using Chromaluxe panels with Sawgrass inks coming up with the 65 year rating as you mention.

« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 09:48:33 am by dgberg »
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deanwork

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2019, 09:48:01 am »

Thanks Dan. I was so ignorant about all the dye sub to metal process. I see they have a number of different surfaces of ChromaLuxe. According to Wilhelm the Epson inks are about the same longevity as Sawgrass.

Do you know how the image quality compares to the specialized SwissQ flatbed printer and their dyes to say dibond panels? Laumont does that on all kinds of surfaces in real photo quality ( unlike the HP flatbeds that are low res and with far fewer ink dilutions and no gray.)  Wilhelm said he was going to publish fade tests of the prints done on the SwissQ with the dyes they use but apparently he never did. That’s not a good sign for these big artists wanting to sell giant expensive works on glass and metal.

John



That is correct. Chromaluxe is the name of the panels only. Made by Universal Woods out of Louisville, Ky.
This is where it gets tricky. Every different printer, ink and paper you use in the dye sublimation process changes the output. (Just like it does when printing on papers)
No such thing as an OEM ink. Except maybe the Sawgrass line on several printers they market with their ink. (SG400, SG800 and Virtuoso VJ628)
Sawgrass developed dye sublimation ink and had contracts with the large format printer companies, Epson was one of them.
Their are now more then a half dozen. JTech, Ink Owl and Sawgrass to name a few. Just about everyone doing Wide format dye sub does anything possible to steer away from Sawgrass.
They had a monopoly on the market for years and just raked their consumers over the coals.
When I had my 4880 the cost was $1.50 a ml. I finally purchased Ink Owl and refillable carts. 
At .15 a ml, ran a new profile and the output was just as good or better then Sawgrass at 10 times the savings. (Longevity tests are still ongoing but look real good.)
Other then the Sawgrass and wide format Epsons you mostly have Epson printers converted to dye sublimation like my P8000.
I would be interested in reading the article to see what ink, printer and paper was used for the test.

Just read the article. They are using Chromaluxe panels with Sawgrass inks coming up with the 65 year rating as you mention.
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dgberg

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2019, 12:43:51 pm »

Sawgrass invented dye sublimation ink and has held the patent until 2016 or 2017. (I think.)
Sawgrass held on very tightly to the distribution rights of their inks. Small format 24" and under you were tied to their inks in their small cartridges at an exorbitant price.
If you had a 44" and wider printer you could purchase their ink in 1 liter bottles for refillable carts.
Epson signed an agreement some years ago with Sawgrass for the right to sell their own dye sublimation ink in there own printers.(Heard it was for at least several million) Even though Epson had their own dye sub inks Sawgrass claimed the rights as the inventor and was going to sue Epson.
Epson paid them and I have not heard anything further. All of this has probably changed as the patent has supposedly run out.

Sorry I cannot answer your flatbed printer questions.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2019, 06:58:11 am by dgberg »
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Lessbones

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2019, 07:53:12 pm »

Hey Guys--

My name is Cody Ranaldo, I'm the Technical Director here at Griffin Editions.  We do in fact use ChromaLuxe panels exclusively for our sublimation metal prints.  dgberg is correct that there are a lot of factors involved in quality dye-sub prints (and quality prints in general) and to be honest, there's really very little OEM anything.  Most of the time everyone's ink is made by a third party, paper is made by a third party, and especially in the case of large format printers, heads are almost always made by a third party.  Epson heads are still by far the most common in sublimation/solvent printing, and we use both DX7 heads and the older DX5 ones (these are not even official Epson names, but they are what the industry goes by a lot of the time).

I just finished having lunch with Henry Wilhelm, and he actually pointed out this thread to me  ;D.

Basically, Sawgrass is the only company that really went after the hard-substrate sublimation market, so they are very well known in printing on ChromaLuxe and other hard substrates, but very recently we decided to stop using their inks after years of difficulty with nozzle dropouts in the dilute inks, whole channel dropouts in the black ink, and just various inconsistencies in general.  We burned through two 9890s and a 9900 in 4 years, along with a number of head changes on each.  I do all the maintenance on our printers myself, as well as all the color management and the quality control for all of our color processes here, so at least we were able to save a bit of money on service calls, since there is no warranty on an Epson once you convert it to 3rd party.... anything.

I'm not going to say which ink we switched to, but Wilhelm generously offered to test it for us as a favor in the hopes that the manufacturer would then pay to have the results published, so that is beginning as we speak.  I have done my own testing as well (a couple test charts on the roof in the hot sun for 2 months) and I'm actually reading in the results of that test as we speak-- but so far the results are favorable against what we had been using before, and the black ink is much more "neutral" off the bat, so we've come quite a long way in terms of B&W dye-sub.  It's an incredibly tricky and fickle process, and it's taken many years for us to work a lot of the kinks out.

As far as UV curable goes, as with any other inkjet based process, you're really only limited by the minimum droplet size of the heads in use on a specific printer.  SwissQ uses a Konica-Minolta head which can produce at 15pl minimum dot-- quite a bit larger than the finest heads available today, hence their decision to include a light black ink where most manufacturers omit it.  The Kyocera produced heads are the finest currently available (in industrial tech anyway) and can make a 3.5pl minimum dot, which puts them on par with most of Epson's offerings.  It wasn't until Epson introduced the DX5 series that people really started taking it's prints seriously as photographic works-- also approx 3.5pl at minimum.

Literally no other manufacturer uses a light black (or grey) ink in their UV curable printers, and in my experience you can do a hell of a lot with proper profiling and a late-start black generation to minimize the graininess in highlights that can result from not having dilute greys, especially if you're dealing with a dye-based process like dye-sublimation.

IMHO what things really boil down to is that inkjet printers are simply a chassis built around a head, and when you go into the big leagues of industrial printing, everybody is picking from the same basket of head choices and simply deciding how solidly constructed the rest of the machine is, as well as the best way to drive said head.  AFAIK Ricoh is the only manufacturer of UV printers that actually makes their own printheads.  We are going to see an absolutely absurd amount of movement in the UV curable sector in the next 5-10 years now that LED curing is here, the prices will start to tumble, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see a UV curable, full paper-width head office inkjet printer pop up some time in the next few decades...

If anyone wants to get samples made or just generally talk more tech-talk you can contact me at cody@griffineditions.com

thanks guys!
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dgberg

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2019, 07:00:19 am »

Hey Guys--

My name is Cody Ranaldo, I'm the Technical Director here at Griffin Editions.  We do in fact use ChromaLuxe panels exclusively for our sublimation metal prints.  dgberg is correct that there are a lot of factors involved in quality dye-sub prints (and quality prints in general) and to be honest, there's really very little OEM anything.  Most of the time everyone's ink is made by a third party, paper is made by a third party, and especially in the case of large format printers, heads are almost always made by a third party.  Epson heads are still by far the most common in sublimation/solvent printing, and we use both DX7 heads and the older DX5 ones (these are not even official Epson names, but they are what the industry goes by a lot of the time).

I just finished having lunch with Henry Wilhelm, and he actually pointed out this thread to me  ;D.

Basically, Sawgrass is the only company that really went after the hard-substrate sublimation market, so they are very well known in printing on ChromaLuxe and other hard substrates, but very recently we decided to stop using their inks after years of difficulty with nozzle dropouts in the dilute inks, whole channel dropouts in the black ink, and just various inconsistencies in general.  We burned through two 9890s and a 9900 in 4 years, along with a number of head changes on each.  I do all the maintenance on our printers myself, as well as all the color management and the quality control for all of our color processes here, so at least we were able to save a bit of money on service calls, since there is no warranty on an Epson once you convert it to 3rd party.... anything.

I'm not going to say which ink we switched to, but Wilhelm generously offered to test it for us as a favor in the hopes that the manufacturer would then pay to have the results published, so that is beginning as we speak.  I have done my own testing as well (a couple test charts on the roof in the hot sun for 2 months) and I'm actually reading in the results of that test as we speak-- but so far the results are favorable against what we had been using before, and the black ink is much more "neutral" off the bat, so we've come quite a long way in terms of B&W dye-sub.  It's an incredibly tricky and fickle process, and it's taken many years for us to work a lot of the kinks out.

As far as UV curable goes, as with any other inkjet based process, you're really only limited by the minimum droplet size of the heads in use on a specific printer.  SwissQ uses a Konica-Minolta head which can produce at 15pl minimum dot-- quite a bit larger than the finest heads available today, hence their decision to include a light black ink where most manufacturers omit it.  The Kyocera produced heads are the finest currently available (in industrial tech anyway) and can make a 3.5pl minimum dot, which puts them on par with most of Epson's offerings.  It wasn't until Epson introduced the DX5 series that people really started taking it's prints seriously as photographic works-- also approx 3.5pl at minimum.

Literally no other manufacturer uses a light black (or grey) ink in their UV curable printers, and in my experience you can do a hell of a lot with proper profiling and a late-start black generation to minimize the graininess in highlights that can result from not having dilute greys, especially if you're dealing with a dye-based process like dye-sublimation.

IMHO what things really boil down to is that inkjet printers are simply a chassis built around a head, and when you go into the big leagues of industrial printing, everybody is picking from the same basket of head choices and simply deciding how solidly constructed the rest of the machine is, as well as the best way to drive said head.  AFAIK Ricoh is the only manufacturer of UV printers that actually makes their own printheads.  We are going to see an absolutely absurd amount of movement in the UV curable sector in the next 5-10 years now that LED curing is here, the prices will start to tumble, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see a UV curable, full paper-width head office inkjet printer pop up some time in the next few decades...

If anyone wants to get samples made or just generally talk more tech-talk you can contact me at cody@griffineditions.com

thanks guys!

Thanks Cody
Very informative.

deanwork

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2019, 09:29:42 am »

Thanks Cody,

This is a good example of why Griffin Editions has such a great reputation nationally for being straight with people and hiring good people.

John




Thanks Cody
Very informative.
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aaronchan

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Re: Griffins dye sub
« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2019, 12:00:35 pm »

Thanks Cody,

This is a good example of why Griffin Editions has such a great reputation nationally for being straight with people and hiring good people.

John

Just wanna clarify one thing since someone mentioned swissQ in here.
The droplet size is quite an interesting thing to talk about. Epson's printer can produce as small as 1.5picolitre on their small machine and 3.5 on their larger machines. But does anyone be able to tell the difference between a 13x19 inch print between a P800 and a P9000?

I have personally investigate a swissQprint printer and their print out. I can clearly read a 1 point font printed with white ink on a black media. Some say, EFI Vutek can print 1000 dpi which makes a very good quality, well, not really. The EFI does make a feather effect on the ink drop which will soften the image a bit. The SwissQ makes a very good leveling when they install their print head onto the printer which makes each droplet stays the shape as they should do. That's why SwissQ can make such a small font clearly

Sorry for the off topic.
p.s. Griffin is one of the top 3 labs in NYC as I used to live there for quite some years.

aaron
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