flaar reports large format printers using solvent ink for ... › solventseries › solvent... ·...

Nicholas Hellmuth

FLAAR Reports

Large Format Printers usingSolvent Ink for

Outdoor longevity on Vinyl without need for lamination

updated SEPTEMBER 2003

Introduction 1Wide Format Electrostatic Printers 244 TO 75 Inch Solvent Ink Printers DGI (Digital Graphics Incorporation) 3

Gerber Orion 3Mutoh 4 Encad 5Oce Arizona 30s 5

Mimaki JV3 6 Gretag Arizona (now all branded as Oce) 6 New Roland entries into the solvent ink market 7 SIM 9Solvent Ink Printers from Korea, Taiwan, and Mainland China Aztec from Korea 9Summary on the new breed of $30,000 to $50,000 solvent ink printers 9 Infiniti 10 Rasign PosterJet 10 Eastech 10General Observations on any Solvent Ink Printer under $150,000 10Solvent aspects of solvent inks 11Grand Format solvent ink printers (roughly 75” to 16 feet wide) 11 ColorSpan 110s 12 Innovative Solutions 12 Oce (Gretag) 12Alternatives if you cannot stand the health hazards and odor of solvent ink 12 Air Filtration Systems 12 Alternative Technologies 13 Large format printers using Oil-based Ink 13 Thermal Transfer 13

Wide Format Airbrush printers 13Printing On Rigid, Flat, Thick Media 14UV curable and other new technologies 14 Media for outdoor signage 15Traditional Inkjet Workhorses 15

Inkjet printers with Epson piezo printhead systems 15FLAAR Recommendations 16Conclusions 17Bibliography 18Legal notice 18Advisory 18Acknowledgements 20

Caption for front cover photograph: Col-orSpan 72s solvent ink printer at GOA 2004 tradeshow

FLAAR Reports CONTENTS

FLAAR Reports 1Solvent Series

Introduction

The advent of capable solvent ink printers in the $40,000 dollar range has created lots of interest. As a result, FLAAR is getting quite a lot of inquiries for help figuring out what printer to buy that prints on media and holds up outside without lamination.

In fact, although this report is titled “solvent ink,” we cover all printing technologies which old up out-doors:

• The newest trend in print for outdoor durability is actually UV-curable inks. • This report series also covers oil-based wide format inkjet printers.

But what are the pros and cons of oil-based inks and UV curable inks?

True, full strength solvent ink is very aggressive. Solvent ink in Oce-Arizona, Nur, Scitex-Vision, Vutek printers can print on uncoated vinyl. This can lower the cost-per-square-foot dramatically. What makes other inkjet prints so expensive is the need of special coated media for water-based printers (Encad, Epson, Canon, ColorSpan, HP, Roland, Mimaki, Mutoh). If you are printing billboard-sized images, that will get rather expensive with a regular inkjet printer. Hence, companies that specialize in vehicle wrap, building wrap, billboards, or any large signs tend to use solvent ink printers.

Beware, however, of the first generation breed of “lite” solvent inks. These may not work on the low cost, vinyl substrates. Some of these unusual solvent inks may have an oil component (although they are not labeled as oil-based inks; true oil-inks are used in XES and Seiko printers only. The topic of lite solvent inks is so hot this season that we have moved our comments to a separate report on lite and eco-solvent inks.

The downside of full strength solvent ink is its aggressiveness also with the environment and with your nose. Solvent inks may contain cyclohexanone, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether acetate, 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone and other tasty ingredients. The ink is also flammable. Now for the good news: solvent ink reportedly “does not induce cancer.” Nonetheless, it is poisonous when inhaled and poisonous when exposed to the skin. You do not get cancer because it “works on the nervous system.”

And worst of all, is that the “use of alcoholic drinks strengthen the harmful action” of solvent inks. What a bummer.

All of the above taken from the instruction manual of a solvent ink printer. The labeling requirements for the United Kingdom are very brief; the label code is “Harmful.” Vapor, together with air, creates an explosive as it “reacts violently with oxidation media.” It is amazing that these things are even allowed to print without security precautions at American tradeshows. In Europe, a solvent ink printer requires an exhaust system even at a tradeshow.

Some solvent ink printers are really excellent (we list them). However, some of the new retrofitted printers with after-market solvent systems have turned out to be not a good idea. People with experi-ence suggest that you avoid them.


Wide Format Electrostatic Printers

An older kind of printer is electrostatic, but no new technology has been developed here in the last several years and so fewer companies are buying this kind of printer any more.

Electrostatic technology has been overwhelmed by all the development funding pouring into inkjet technology. Phoenix tried to sell a low-cost electrostatic printer. Phoenix went bankrupt after a year or so (do not buy any used electrostatic printer; even Xerox has abandoned their own electrostatic print-ers). One of the few electrostatic systems that had survived at least until about 2001 was the Digital ColorStation 5442 of RasterGraphics.

This particular model of RasterGraphics is sold with KV color toner to overcome some of the limitations of 4 color e-stat machines. The images on display at SGIA trade show were better than the output from a 300 dpi Encad, less grainy for example. This e-stat machine can reproduce Coca-Cola red, something that is tough for a Roland to match with its limited gamut pigmented inkjet inks. $79,000 is approximate price. Do not expect miracles, but if you need outside longevity, speed, low costs of the media, then at least check out this electrostatic system.

If you need to do wallpaper, for example, then you may find an electrostatic system is one to look at. There is no solvent ink smell and no odor from the vinyl used in a grand format solvent ink printer either. Would you paper your home or office with anything printed with solvent ink? However, if you print wallpaper with an electrostatic printer, be sure the clients do not mind the grainy appearance and other downsides of electrostatic print results.

If you wish to get a full description of how an electrostatic printer can generate a profit for your sign business, you may wish to contact the top man in electrostatic printing worldwide, Romit Bhattacharya at [email protected], or fax (973) 575-9626. Romit is the force behind electrostatic printing in general and the Specialty Toner Corporation in particular.

The company RasterGraphics, as far as I can ascertain, no longer exists under that name. Oce has purchased Gretag, which had previously bought RasterGraphics. Thus, I do not see how any new electrostatic printers are being manufactured by a company no longer in existence.

Thus, any printers being sold would logi-cally seem to be those still remaining in the warehouse as well as refurbished models. No printers are listed on their web site, but a manager at Specialty Toner Corporation said they still have actual printers available; Specialty Toner still provides service and very definitely still has toner.

3M’s web site is elusive of whether their Scotchprint Models 9512 and 2000 are still manufactured. Media is available, but there is no straightforward statement of whether the printers still exist. When you click on “printers” and you get only what media works on their printers. Reportedly, 3M still has printers in its warehouse.

RasterGraphic printer

mailto:[email protected]


Nonetheless, many pundits from this earlier era claim that electrostatic printing is alive and well. But if no new technology has been introduced, and if not a single printer is still being manufactured, I am not sure how electrostatic “life” is defined.

The other problem is the source of media. Few companies are willing to develop new and improved media for a class of printer that is judged obsolete. Thus, the question is where will you be able to get media five years from now? If only from a single vendor its tough to expect competitive prices.

Electrostatic printers can also produce dye sublimation output for subsequent heat transfer to other materials. If you are interested in dye sub, ask for the FLAAR report on dye sublimation equipment and supplies.

DGI (Digital Graphics Incorporation)

This Korean company has been exhibiting at tradeshows for about 2 years now. They use 200 dpi Xaar printheads. We now have two separate reports on their printers.

Gerber Orion (no longer sold by Gerber as of autumn 2001)

An entry level solvent based wide format inkjet does 62” widths. This is the Gerber Orion, which is evidently a reincarnation of the former (ANAgraph) Arizona 30, also known as the ANA Spectrum-Jet. It uses solvent-based inks from 3M, six colors. As typical of printers for outdoor signage the dpi is low, at about 360 dpi. This machine uses Xaar heads.

The advantages of any printer using full strength solvent ink are printing on uncoated media (which means media costs much less) and solvent inks are more weather resistant. This means the signs survive outdoors for about 2 or 3 years with no lamination (the sales rep admitted this was the tentative rating).

The downside of this specific model is the slow speed, unimpres-sive image, and lots of banding. Banding is typical of that old generation of Xaar piezo printheads. But as sign printers know, you cannot see the banding on a billboard when the viewer is driving down the Interstate highway. However, if you are doing a sign as large as a billboard, the Orion is too slow.

Gerber had little success with selling this printer (its so slow). So now Oce-Gretag is offering it again. We much prefer the Arizona 30 version from Oce-Gretag.

But, if you are doing trade show graphics that need to be viewed close-up, or backlit (for bus shelters, for example) you really need a higher dpi. Most importantly, you want a printer where the banding is not as obvious. Besides, most trade show graphics are either indoors or only need to hold up for a week outside. You can get rainproof media for the HP and I would presume also for the Encad and ColorSpan, which offer a 72” width. Bus shelter backlit installations are usually protected from direct rain, so again, hardly a need for solvent ink prints.

Gerber Orion exhibited at the India Tradeshow 2001.

• 44 TO 75 Inch Solvent Ink Printers


Mutoh

Solvent based ink systems are made by Mutoh (one of their models; I believe it’s the Mutoh Albatros 54, is now relabeled as the Mutoh Tomahawk). In Europe, India, and Asia this same model has a numerical designation, PJ 1304 NX.

Output is not impressive though it may be better than the Gerber Orion. The printer originally came with no hood, so it is illegal in Europe without a very costly adaptation. Solvent inks are now illegal in most European countries without proper ventilation.

We like the Mutoh printers that use water-based inks (such as the older I-Jet, Accuplot and Kodak) but we are not impressed with their older solvent ink printer. The Albatros has not fared well in the marketplace either. The unfortunate Alabtros achieved only modest sales of 300 per year worldwide. The Toucan should do better since the Toucan is a all around a better printer.

If you are looking at the Albatros or Tomahawk, you may be better off with an Arizona RasterGraphics printer, since it has a hood which solves the problem of venomous exhaust fumes from the nasty solvent inks.

A newer Mutoh solvent ink printer is replacing the Mutoh Albatros (which we saw at Seybold San Fran-cisco 2001). Neither a hood nor exhaust system for the fumes was not noticeable. It is somewhat con-fusing to know which printer is which. When we last checked back in the winter of 2002, Mutoh was offer-ing a wide range of solvent ink printers such as the Toucan. The Toucan NXPro 64 and Toucan 87 are reportedly an adaptation of the PJ 1304 from Asia. Lets hope the Toucan has some substantial improvements, since the 1304 we have seen in Germany and India was not impressive. Certainly Mutoh has enough engineers to get it right eventually.

The nomenclature is even more confusing. What is the Mutoh Falcon II Outdoor, and is it the same as the Mutoh Rockhopper?

Rockhopper 43 and 62 are both 180 dpi Mutoh printers. I am guessing this is a brochure I got in Europe at IPEX. Sometimes the names in Europe differ from the desig-nations for essentially the same printer in America.

Multiple passes aspire for up to 1400 x 1400 inter-polated but you get less than a single square meter (about 3’ by 3’) in an entire hour. This sounds very, very slow. Even at 180 dpi the speed is rather slow. The printer uses lite solvent ink. Calling the ink “eco” solvent is just reminding people that solvent inks are unhealthy.

Mutoh Rockhopper

Mutoh Albatross


The Mutoh Rockhopper is for small and middle-sized sign shops. Rockhopper uses eco-solvent, which is pseudo-name for a sort of oil-based ink. This is similar, but not the same as, oil inks in XES and Seiko printers. Rockhopper has more solvent than oil. XES is closer to pure oil as its solvent.

XES requires coated media. Roland SolJet requires coated media. It is probable that the Rockhop-per needs coated media. Like any printer with Xaar heads, will be a tad slow and the quality is not as uniform as the better Spectra heads in the higher priced machine.

Mutoh Toucan uses true solvent ink, Spectra heads. These heads offer higher quality and longer printhead life than Xaar heads. The Toucan is a real production machine for a commercial sign shop. The Toucan is also faster, better, and a higher quality than the ill-fated Mutoh Albatros. The Mutoh Toucan should do fine with raw, uncoated vinyl since the Toucan uses pure aggres-sive solvent inks.

The Mutoh Toucan is a relatively new machine. Report-edly, it is still being upgraded, with a better feeder wheel system to pull the media through the printer. We have interviewed one user of a Mutoh Toucan who is totally satisfied.

Word on the street is that if your Toucan works, it will work very well. This is a polite way of saying that, like with any manufacturing run, be sure you test the machine you receive and make sure you got one of the good ones.

Encad

Encad cancelled its solvent ink printer once the Europeans passed laws that required a solvent ink printer to have a hooded ventilation system. So you need to check your local laws to see whether an unhooded solvent ink printer is allowed in your state. I do not know the other federal requirements regarding health warnings for solvent ink printers.

Encad now has it’s VinylJet 36, reportedly successful. We do not yet have much feedback on this printer. At least Encad was honest about the kind of media that worked, and that media which did not work.

Oce Arizona 30s

Gerber did not sell many of the Orion printers. So Gretag took it back, improved the quality, and increased the speed. The result is now the Oce Arizona 30. This is because while the printer was being returned back from Gerber to Gretag, Gretag was sold to Oce.

The new Oce Arizona 30s looks much better than the previous two generations (ANAgraph SpectrumJet or Gerber Orion). But it is still a tad slow.

Mutoh Toucan


Mimaki JV3

The Mimaki JV3 is reportedly the best constructed and most reasonably priced of the new breed of solvent ink printers. This uses true solvent inks.

Although we do not have the JV3, we do have the JV4 and are very content with its quality. Mimaki is a Japa-nese engineering company. Frankly, their printers are the best designed and constructed of their class. Mimaki beat out Mutoh and Roland in producing an aqueous ink printer that uses the Epson 10000 printheads. Roland is still struggling to get their prototype to market. Mutoh got their prototype finished almost a year after Mimaki did. The result is that Mimaki has sold 3,000 of their dual 6-ink JV4 model.

The Mimaki JV3 is now out. Thus, we recommend that you skip retrofitted, jerry-rigged solvent ink printers. I am not sure that printers made in China or Korea are the answer either. This is a polite way of saying that it might be a better idea to wait a few months and see what Mimaki is able to produce as a solvent ink printer.

Gretag Arizona (now all branded as Oce)

For outside signage, the market for solvent based ink systems is grow-ing, so companies such as Gretag are expanding into it. The new Arizona 1100-3 prints 111 inches wide (2.82 m, over 9 feet wide), at 360 dpi, which is respectable for a billboard. It uses piezo heads. I did not check to see whether they were Epson or Xaar.

My notes from The Big Picture Show for the RasterGraphics Arizona printer are as follows: 300 dpi (typical for Xaar heads and solvent inks) is claimed to be “apparent 600 dpi.” My notes say the quality was “very, very nice.” (Gretag) RasterGraphics Arizona output looked good at SGIA trade show as well. As readers notice quickly, FLAAR is very picky about the visual appeal of images. The advantage of the Arizona is that you get up to 3 years of outdoor durability, with no lamination, when using the 3M inks on 3M materials. All true solvent ink printers can work on untreated media, which costs substantially less than inkjet media that has to be coated in order to receive the water-based dye or water-based pigmented inks used by Epson, HP, Encad et al.

If you would like a separate report just on the Arizona, please just ask for the “Arizona user report”. In general, we hear nice things about this printer, the kind of quality you would expect from a company as well known as (Oce) RasterGraphics.

If you are considering a solvent-based printer, be sure you recognize the maintenance requirements, whether a trained technician is required, and how much cleaning is needed each day before you start. You need to calculate such down time into your budget. Some solvent ink printers require this tender loving attention, as does the ColorSpan (thermal printheads, regular inkjet inks and not solvent inks). ColorSpan, however, is faster than most solvent based ink printers and is museum-exhibit quality, something not yet achieved by any Xaar printhead, solvent or oil-based ink system.


We saw the new Arizona printers at Print ’01 and Seybold. They have a very nice output. Gretag is a Swiss company and the quality of their workmanship is evident. We highly recommend all the various models of Arizona printer, especially the new ones. I believe they use Spectra heads, although I am not positive. Spectra heads tend to produce a better quality than Xaar heads.

The Oce Arizona 90 is another solvent ink printer that we intend to learn more about at upcoming tradeshows during the autumn of 2002.

If you are researching the Arizona 500, be sure that the sales rep explains any still unresolved issues. Many printers are sort of under constant development (such as the Orion). This is a polite way of saying there may be a few quirks that the engineers are still working on.

New Roland entries into the solvent ink market

Several companies in the USA now retrofit Roland Hi-Fi Jet FJ-52 and CAMMJet CJ-500 printers to accept solvent inks. This means that the quality is superior to any Mutoh or Gerber, and the cost is much less. Since both the Gerber and Mutoh are also rather slow, the Roland SolventJET is no worse in that respect.

In Europe, Rolands are modified by Granthams, or AIT (Applied Image Technology). AIT markets Shiraz, an excellent RIP. Again, it is a basic six-color Roland modi-fied with solvent ink system and the heater required by solvent ink.

However, I do not entirely see the sense in buying a retrofitted solvent ink printer when solvent ink printers are readily available, such as the Mutoh Toucan or Mimaki JV3. That is not a retrofitted any-thing; indeed it is a second-generation, full-strength solvent ink printer.

If you have to produce banner-length murals, or an entire bus wrap, most Epson piezo technology is too slow. A Roland printer (solvent or otherwise) is basically the same system as an Epson 9000, just with different sheet metal and different software. Epson makes the printheads inside for use by Roland DGA.

The solvent version of the Roland is simply a regular Roland with solvent ink capabilities added on by another company. The result is an after-market printer is called the Hi-Fi SolventJET. The makeover is possible for the recent 6-color printers, but not the 8-color V8 Hi-Fi Pro. Actually, several different companies retrofit the Roland, so the brand names are variable. The downside is that you still may get Roland’s proverbial banding, even with solvent inks.

I have no idea whether you can return and use normal inks after you have ret-rofitted your Roland printer or not. I do not know what using solvent inks will do to the lifespan of the printheads. Epson piezo printheads (which is what is in a Roland) are not at all permanent. The claim of being permanent is to lure you to buy them instead of a thermal printhead system where the printheads are deliberately not permanent (which means they are easily replaceable, which has many advantages). If you wish help in understanding the hype on piezo vs. thermal printheads, just ask for the FLAAR Report, “Piezo vs Thermal, fact vs. fiction, pros and cons of each printhead technology.”

Roland Hi-Fi SolventJet shown at DPI 01.


In theory, it is a good idea, since it costs less than an Arizona, but it would be rather slow unless used at the lowest resolution. But one of the two downsides of some of these retrofitted solvent ink printers is that they do not accept the media that you assume they should. Take the SolventJet (a retrofitted Roland). If you look at Oracal’s media compatibility chart, you will see that their media prints on the Oce Gretag Arizona 30, Arizona 90, Arizona 180, Arizona 500, Mutoh solvent ink printers, Nur, Scitex Vision, Vutek but 14 kinds of media are not compatible with this same media.

The second downside of the retrofitted Roland solvent ink printer is its Epson piezo printheads. These heads were not originally designed to withstand the aggressive solvents in these inks. Several people have pointed out the potential for printhead failure. The general word out on the street is to avoid ret-rofitted printers with Epson heads. This is a polite way of saying a person should double-check with other people who already own one.

Whether the typical problems of Roland’s Epson piezo printheads continue (such as banding, dropping colors, color matching problems) with solvent ink, we do not know at the present time.

But at least it would not be as bad of an output as the Orion or older Mutoh solvent ink printers (the newest Mutoh solvent ink printers of year 2002 are improved). Still, the Arizona is the less venomous choice due to its exhaust system. If you wish to poison the air in your building, use an open solvent-ink system. Otherwise, the solvent fumes will spread throughout your entire building. But if you select the Arizona, the majority of the fumes are exhausted by the built-in enclosure, so it is not as poisonous to your health.

Open solvent ink systems are illegal in Europe as of last year. That is why Encad stopped development of its solvent-ink system at that time (a prototype Encad had been working on for two years). Their design did not include an exhaust enclosure system. Merely an exhaust hood is not enough.

It remains to be seen whether the new solvent-ink Rolands are legal under the new European law. California is also passing new legislation on VOC emissions. We do not yet know the details of the laws.

The Lyson solvent inks are stated to be “organic”, yet the web site describing the Roland system is honest in adding that the “odor is minimal.” Is a minimal odor like being “only a little bit pregnant”? The fact that so much effort is put into the claims that the solvent inks are safe really suggest that real solvent inks are perhaps less than safe.

We recently inspected a Roland printer on the island of Malta with after-market conversion to use “solvent inks.” This printer had a serious issue with horizontal banding defects. This prob-lem is inherent in many Roland printers and not as a result of solvent, oil, or water-based inks… the printer may band with any ink.

We make a considerable effort to visit sign shops on every continent when we are consulting elsewhere in that same city. No other information source, neither on the Internet, nor any magazine, provides such global coverage. Lyson solvent inks


SIM

Steward of International Marketing sell a 62-inch REX-62 and a 92-inch VT-92. Although they look sort of like an old four-color Mutoh, I do not yet know their original manufacturer. I have no contacts with this company and plan to check out this printer at future tradeshows.

We recommend better-known printers from major companies. You need to be sure to have spare parts, local dealer support, and access to other people who know the same printer. We like to support new innovative upstart projects, but cannot recommend printers that we do not have, due to the risk element.

Aztec from Korea

A company named DGI, Digital Graphics Corporation offers a solvent ink printer called the Aztec. It uses 4 colors and 360 dpi, which is okay for signs viewed at a distance. Sure, this is better than airbrush printers. The printheads are piezo, but there is no indication of whether they are Xaar or Epson. The speed is not very fast, considering the low dpi. Bundled RIP is Scan-vec-Amiable; this is what Roland and Encad use as a low-end bundled RIP. It’s okay if a current version. If it is an earlier version instead of a current version, we have received complaints about it. Be sure it can RIP on the fly (RIP while it prints). If incapable, then it takes forever to RIP a large file. If a lite version, it may not have all the features you really need.

If this printer is at the next SGIA then I can inspect it. Until this time we are unable to comment one way or another. The downside of this kind of no-name printer is that they have a low resale value. You never know how solvent the company will remain, and whether updates and upgrades will be forthcoming.

Summary on the new breed of $30,000 to $50,000 solvent ink printers

At the upcoming year 2003 tradeshows, we will check out the chemistry of the various flavors of “lite” solvent ink. It is important to know which have the oil component, and so on. The product literature tends not to mention any of this at all.

Yet, it is an American tradition to have full-disclosure on products. You cannot have valid product comparisons if you are comparing printers that use totally different kinds of ink.

Furthermore, buyers may mistakenly presume that their new $30,000 solvent ink printer will work on the lowest cost vinyl. But unfortunately, it cannot. It turns out you need the $45,000 model for true solvent inks. So you are stuck buying higher cost media, even coated media. This means you do not necessarily get the benefits of the low-cost vinyl you so very much need to use in order to compete with anyone who has a Nur, Scitex-Vision, or Vutek.

Aztec printer

• Solvent Ink Printers from Korea, Taiwan, and Mainland China


Infiniti

Infiniti FY 8250, which is made in Mainland China costs $39,000, uses 4 colors and 8 heads, 185 dpi, Xaar heads. The output is fuzzy and splotchy. It is hard to tell whether the poor quality was result of a terrible photo or bad quality overall. This was the worst output of any printer at the entire tradeshow. Nonetheless, they said they had sold 50 units to Mexican distributors.

Rasign PosterJet

In that same booth as the Infiniti was a completely different Chinese printer being shown, the Rasign PosterJet. The base resolution is listed as 75; top resolution is claimed to be 370. The quality at least looked better than the unfortunate Infiniti. The downside of any of these off-brand printers is spare parts and a poor resale value. You have no way of knowing anything about the mother company, how long they may stay in business, or how long this model would be supported. They may be cheap, but you run a considerable risk.

Eastech

Eastech had the nicest output of the less than grand format solvent ink printers at the show. Eight colors. They stated the printer was assembled in Japan and using heads which were not specifically Xaar or Epson. However the owner stated that all piezo heads use Xaar patents under license, even Epson. I wonder if that explains why Epson piezo heads band. Banding is a generic defect of most Xaar technology. This needs to be checked out.

I did not happen to notice any banding on the Eastech. The color looked great. The price of the regular width was $50,000, while the 87-inch was $90,000. That means that the Mimaki JV3 is much, much more eco-nomical. So far, the Mimaki is the most reasonably priced solvent-based printer yet available.

General Observations on any Solvent Ink Printer under $150,000

The biggest boom in the market today is a solvent ink printer in the $30,000 to $60,000 range. But beware. The ads, the tradeshow hype are all enticing you to buy before you think. But please take the time to think clearly: does this printer actually function in a sign shop? The only way you will find out is to locate a sign shop on your own. Do not ask the sales rep for a recommendation. Many manufactur-ers have print shops that are actually just demo labs for their products. No. What you want is a sign shop with ink splattered all over the place, with signs being printed day and night, with experienced printer operators who can tell you, XYZ Printer has been working fabulously for months. In that case, buy it if you wish.

But if the print shop operators have the printer parked in the corner, or if they already got rid of it, then is this printer what you really want?


Solvent aspects of solvent inks

Solvent inks, as with screen printing inks and even inks for regular offset printing, have escaped leg-islation for decades. It is amazing that the very people who breathe these fumes are the ones lobby-ing for their continued use. Of course, the same thing happened in the tobacco industry until medical science finally documented the obvious. It would be an interesting study to survey the cancer and the premature illness rate of people who work in print shops using these inks.

If you are curious about potential hazards of solvent inks, read page 39 of the July 2001 issue of Digital Graphics, their website is www.nbm.com/digitalgraphics. That was a very daring article for a trade magazine.

The European Union finally woke up to the hazards two years ago. It is so bad that printer manufactur-ers are no longer allowed to have unhooded solvent ink printers even for as short as a few days at a tradeshow. Then California recognized the dangers of solvent inks as well.

Chemists have come out with a variety of ploys to encourage people to continue to use these sub-stances. One company even labeled their ink as “eco solvent,” as if that somehow lessons its chemical downsides.

Now there are low odor solvent inks. These are the so-called “lite” solvents. In other words, the solvents are still there but your nose does not issue warning signals to your brain.

Solvent ink systems are expensive, but may have other advantages that you need for your particular line of work. Vutek, Scitex, Signtech Salsa (now a part of Nur), Nur, etc. cost from $180,000 up to $500,000. Vutek now makes several entry-level printers; perhaps some are more in the $60K to $80K ranges. These printers get better with every generation, but the newest Gretag solvent ink printers actually produce closer to photo-realistic quality.

Since we get so many questions about which is better, Vutek or Salsa, I went to the Vutek factory in New Hampshire two years ago. It is clear from this visit that the company is competent in every respect. They must be, because they are outselling all the other grant format printers. The output I saw at SGIA trade show from the Vutek UltraVu 3360 EC looked nice. The output from the PressVu Digital Press was the grainy appearance you would expect from a grand format printer with low resolution. It’s okay for viewing at a distance.

But that was years ago. In 2002, the output from Vutek printers had considerably improved. I believe this is generally the output from Spectra printheads. It is my impression that, in general, this output is better than printers using Xaar printheads. However, there are instances of Xaar-licensed heads with credible output, such as the Konica Iguazu.

• Grand Format Solvent Ink Printers (roughly 75” to 16 feet wide)

http://www.nbm.com/digitalgraphics


It is tough for us to indicate which $200,000 printer is best, since each has its own pros and cons. I would recommend that you visit Vutek in person; after all, it’s only an airplane ticket even if from the other side of the globe. It is better to make this modest cost then to buy someone else’s printer that might be a $150,000 mistake. However, if you need to print for truckside wrap, consider the newest Gretag printers. The new models of Arizona have surprised everyone with their quality as well as reasonable prices.

Idanit is a grand format printer, uses solvent inks, and fast. Unfortunately, we have not seen too many of them recently.

ColorSpan 110s

ColorSpan now offers their 110s model. The innovative fea-ture of this fast production model is that you can pay as you print. You don’t have to pay for the machine up front. Instead you pay by the square foot that you print. To learn about the advantages, contact [email protected].

Innovative Solutions

This is a new printer company uses Xaar printheads. We do not yet know enough about this brand name to comment.

Oce (Gretag)

Oce, formerly Gretag, is using the best of the new technology in solvent ink printers. They make a range of nice printers characterized by heavy-duty construction and impressive output quality. Contact is Gary Feltham. E-mail [email protected].

Alternatives if you cannot stand the health hazards and odor of solvent ink

If you also want to check out a 72” printer that uses regular ink on weather-resistant media, consider the ColorSpan Displaymaker XII or Mach 12. These print-ers cost about $18K for the one and about $24K for the other although, the cost is less than a Vutek. Coated media is required, but is very fast. Is able to print on textiles, banner material, and can do true photo-realis-tic (Vutek claims photo quality, but only if you are half a mile away). We have a ColorSpan DisplayMaker XII and the output quality is awesome. The contact for ColorSpan is [email protected].

Air Filtration Systems

If your print shop needs an air filtration system, consider the Air Fountain System from Ocean Air Filtration Systems.

ColorSpan DisplayMaker XII at ISA tradeshow 2002





Large format printers using Oil-based Ink

Oil-based inks, especially previous generations, have a reputation for not always laminating well. The lami-nate cannot always stick well onto the oily surface. Oil-based printer ads claim their new generation of inks and media laminate just fine, but we would need to test that. However, we do not yet presently have an oil-based printer. The 18 inkjet printers we do have are all water-based.

Nonetheless, we have been checking on oil-based printers at every opportunity. We now have a separate report on them.

Thermal Transfer

Printers using thermal transfer technology (ribbons with color), such as Gerber Maxx, Summa DuraChrome, or the even newer Matan Sprinter are available for outside work. These costly machines are for large commercial sign print-ing companies. If you are just starting, it might be better to use a moderately priced Hewlett-Packard or Encad. With waterproof inks, UV pigmented inks, UV curing (such as FIRST) and traditional lamination, you can do a lot with a basic HP DesignJet. As your profits and experience accumulate, then you can move up to the fancier and more costly alternatives.

Nonetheless, if you need to produce outdoor graphics with no lamination, or indoor graphics such as wallpaper that will withstand sunshine and/or being washed, you may want (or need) an electrostatic printer, a solvent-ink printer, or a thermal transfer printer. The brand we like the best is the Matan. It gives a really great looking output with full and vivid colors. A person who uses the Matan is Steve Leibovitz; his e-mail is [email protected], fax (954) 926-6344. However he has now moved upscale to a UV curable ink printer, the Zund.

For more information, FLAAR has a brief report on large format thermal transfer printers.

Wide Format Airbrush printers

The oldest form of billboard printers used airbrush technology in the beginning. Even Vutek started out with airbrush printers. But the image was too poor unless seen at a distance of 100 yards away. Nowadays, most discerning clients would not accept airbrush images.

The LAC Art Robo is one of the few airbrush printers remaining on the market. The output varies from awful to barely acceptable. Any machine of this nature requires tinkering to get it to work the way it is supposed to.

We do not tend to recommend proprietary systems since you are stuck with one single company for repairs or upgrades. You never know how long they might continue with a model. Resale value is low or non-existent.

• Alternative Technologies

Matan’s Sprinter’s ribbons with color, known as thermal transfer technology



Nowadays, a good installer can cover any size or shape of vehicle with output from a solvent ink printer so there is no special need to have a LAC printer set up to print directly on the vehicle.

Perhaps you have a special need that would be served by the LAC Art Robo, but we are not yet convinced. The people who run the company, however, are pleas-ant. One came to visit FLAAR at BGSU. He showed us output from their most recent model. It did seem a tad better over the dreadful stuff I saw at a tradeshow in India. However, the Oce Arizona, Vutek, even Nur and Scitex-Vision are of such a high quality that I do not see the need for airbrush any more.

The WireJet is slightly different than normal airbrush but the quality is similar, namely low. The WireJet web site reported about two years ago that the printer would no longer be manufactured. This is always the potential problem with small companies. Yet as of summer ’02, both web sites (the inventor and Friend or Faux) are spruced up and appear to be in business. However, on one site the name of the printer was now Omniscope. This makes it harder to keep track of.

The few comments we received on this printer was that they required considerable set up and hands-on assembly. But if you like to tinker and build things, try it. Just remember this is not an inkjet printer, it is a printer that you have to mix your paints for.

Printing On Rigid, Flat, Thick Media

Sign companies would love to be able to print directly onto pre-mounted material or directly onto the rigid sign. Vutek, Durst (Rho), and other companies offer flat, horizontally fed inkjet printers, but they have a lower dpi and over $200,000.

This makes the $14,995 ColorSpan Esprit a bargain. It prints at a vastly supe-rior dpi to any quarter-million-dollar sign-printing machine. The ColorSpan can handle rigid material up to 1/8 inch thick, such as poster board in sizes 4 x 8 feet, perfect for signs. For further information, contact [email protected]

FLAAR has a separate report on printers for rigid, flat, or thick media.

UV-curable and other new technologies

The M.A.G.I.C. system of Aprion is dismissed by its competitors, saying it is “premature”, “not yet available”, and “still three years away”. CrystalJet showed that promising new technologies could sometimes not survive in reality, yet CMOS technology in digital photography has demonstrated that unique technologies sometimes leapfrog older and more established technologies as they take over the high-end market. Time will tell.

Several other flatbed printers are working on solutions with UV curable inks. However, Durst and Zund are some of the few companies to have a solution that actually functions. Reports tell us, however, that the output is only low dpi.

LAC Art Robo



For more information on UV flatbed printers, see the separate FLAAR Report on printers for thick and rigid media.

Although several industrial inkjet printers now offer UV cured inks, there is one UV cured system that cures the media and not the ink. The First system uses output from any normal inkjet printer (Encad, HP, ColorSpan or whatever). Use regular inks, but print onto special polymerizable coated media. You then heat the media in a UV heater (which looks like a wide format scanner), which metamorphoses the top of the media into UV coating.

Although a great idea, the media is less than a meter wide (less than 36”) and very expensive. Plus, you still have to use lamination if you want longer outdoor longevity. Nonetheless, we would be curious to evaluate it, but presently do not have the unit.

Media For Outdoor Signage

Arlon is a major source of vinyl for inkjet; electrostatic, and solvent ink printing. The company’s telephone number is (800) 329-2756. They have a very nice backlit media for Encad and comparable printers.

3M is the major source of media and inks that includes a warranty for how many years it will survive outdoors.

IJ Technologies makes media for Encad, HP, and other printers that are water-resistant with no lami-nation. E-mail [email protected]

Traditional Inkjet Workhorses

The standard inkjet printers that do posters, signs, and presentations are ColorSpan, Encad and Hewlett-Packard. Professional sign printers keep their printers running day and night and all weekend. This is what ColorSpan, Encad and HP are good at.

If you do not want to have solvent fumes in your facility for health reasons, you may prefer a traditional inkjet printer. Just ask for the FLAAR Report on Printers for Signs, Posters, and Banners. The ColorSpan is a fast production machine printing up to 72” wide.

Inkjet printers with Epson piezo printhead systems

If you do not wish to have solvent ink in your facility for health reasons, what other options are there for printing signs?

If the machine you are considering uses an Epson piezo head (such as the Mutoh, Mimaki, Roland HiFi, and possibly their CammJet) then it is slow, very slow. Furthermore you cannot always use output at the claimed faster speeds. To print faster, a piezo head sort of skips spaces to leap across the paper; to print photo quality the piezo head takes up to an hour to do a .91 x 1.5 meter poster and several hours to do a 2 m banner.

Realize also that not all pigmented inks can reproduce certain red colors; so be sure to do your demo test print with lots of reds, cyans, and blues with pigmented inks. This is why the sophisticated outdoor printers have to use solvent-based inks. These are very smelly inks, however.



(Gretag, now Oce) RasterGraphics Bellise Plus uses Epson printheads but with pigmented inks. The regular Bellise (not the Plus) uses dye inks. You cannotchange the inks; you have to change the entire model to change the inks. The output is only average. The output of the Bellise Plus looked okay but had a soft appearance. That means the definition was not especially sharp.

The RasterGraphics Piezo Print 5000 is an older oil-based ink. I have not seen one at a trade show, but this model is still around in print shops. If it is anything like the other oil-based paint systems I know, it uses Xaar heads and has low dpi. “Apparent resolution of 1100 dpi” means it has poor dpi pumped up by the PR department.

For signs, if you need speed, many shops tend to prefer thermal printhead technology: ColorSpan, Encad, or HP. Remember, you can indeed use water resistant media with ColorSpan, HP, and other thermal printhead machines. No lamination required.

Canon cannot do outdoor signs because Canon printheads cannot (yet) accept any pigmented ink.

Epson uses proprietary inks. That means most media does not work, so what little does work is expen-sive. Epson inks are costly and the printer is programmed to clean its printheads with liquid money (it flushes the printheads by forcing ink through them in a repeated cleaning cycle). On some printers with Epson heads, such as a Roland, this can reportedly cost up to $50 per cleaning cycle! Ouch.

The Epson 7600 has a low price to entice you to buy it. That’s because you do not know how much ink it will consume. So Epson makes all its profits on sales of ink and media (something that all manu-facturers try, but Epson has this system perfected because no other ink and not much other media works on their printers except their own).

If you have to compete on price and use an Epson printer, your work may turn out too expensive for you to compete with someone else using a more economical printer.

Remember, the total cost of ownership is what counts. The price of the printer itself is not the major factor: it’s the cost of the ink and media.

FLAAR Recommendation

The solvent ink printers that we liked the best was the Arizona. However in the last year so many new, better, faster printers have come out. The appearance of the Mimaki JV-3 in 2002 changed the whole situation. Here is a modern sophisticated solvent ink printer for high quality output.

So far, the winner on full-strength solvent ink printers appears to be the Mimaki JV3. Prints on economy substrates and does not require coated media.

At PMA tradeshow (March 03) we should be able to obtain docu-mentation of all the major changes in the world of inkjet printer technology. By the time of SGIA ‘03 all the changes will be public. FLAAR will issue reports on both these tradeshows.

Creo Scitex’s Grand Jet printer


The new lite-solvent and new eco-solvent inks are now out (as of September 2003). These are somewhat better than the initial versions (which required costly media).

Conclusions

When all is said and done, however, you should buy the printer that is best for your specific needs. All printers have a few features that need improving, although some more than others. Listing the snags is to help you use these printers more efficiently. Furthermore, you should buy what you like the most even if it has a few imperfect features. You do not need to avoid any printer just because it had failed to impress us.

Just be sure that if you need to print multiple copies of signs or posters, remember that some print-ers are simply too slow. When you attempt to get them to print faster, you may get banding, splotchy images, and if your competition has an Encad or HP they will tend to be able to run circles around anyone attempting to do signs at 1440 dpi. The speed claims in ads do not do much good if the “pro-duction speed” images look unattractive. You might as well get a real production workhorse that can produce quality plus speed.

Claims of print quality vary from the ludicrous to the ridiculous. One brochure claimed “superior print quality” yet at the trade show the print was rather crude, sort of like an experimental image from some early technology, barely useable. Nonetheless, if the viewing distance is 20 feet away, even such a minimal quality image will look just fine. When you look at a billboard you simply do not notice the immature image. So you have to decide that if billboards are all you will ever print, then solvent ink may be your only option. But if you wish to do signs or anything viewed up close, if your competition has a ColorSpan, Encad, Roland, or Hewlett-Packard, then their signs will be of noticeably better print quality.

For other information on signs and large format printing in general, The Big Picture Magazine and Signs of the Times (both by ST Publications). Try the trade associations; trade magazines, and sign trade shows. A few trade magazines are listed in the index of several of my printer sites. Every page has all six indices as cross-links, so go to any of the core sites in the network and look under “magazines”

A good investment would be to go to one of the big sign association trade shows in Orlando, Atlanta, or California. Surely the Internet would list the trade associations for sign printers. FLAAR is now issuing reports from the SGIA sign trade show in New Orleans this November. After we have checked out all the printers, media, and inks there, we are updating all our reports on fleet graphics, floor graphics, billboard, super wide printers such as Vutek, and all the other aspects of producing signs and billboards, especially to survive outside

Please note that two of our web sites are undergoing re-design and re-construction. This is why all the new information is not yet posted on the sites, but rather in these e-mail reports, which are updated weekly.


If you are considering a solvent ink printer, we highly recommend that you ask for Arizona, a Solvent-Ink Printer for Outdoor Signage. This is a FLAAR “Actual-Factual End-User Revelations” report kindly sent to FLAAR by an experienced sign shop operator.

Bibliography

AUSTIN, Jennifer2002 Clearing the Air about Regulating Inkjet Printing. The BigPicture, Sept/Oct 2002, pp. 68-69.

FAST, Duane ([email protected])2002 Alpha-Beta-Charlie: The ABCs of printer development: a variety of media are tested with the

precursor to Mutoh’s new solvent printer. Digital Graphics, January 2002, pp. 36—40.

For Further Information:

A place we recommend for you to obtain further information on solvent ink printersis from Scarab Graphics, toll free (800) 350-1366, or [email protected]. They offer both Mimaki JV3 and Lyson Tiara solvent ink printers, as well as Canon,HP, and both PosterJet RIP and Wasatch RIP.

Legal notice

Inclusion in this study by itself in no way endorses any printer. Equally, exclusion from this study in no way is intended to discredit any printer. The same is true for the RIP, ink and media choices.

Advisory

We do our best to obtain information which we consider reliable. But with hundreds of makes and models of printers, and sometimes when information about them is sparse, or conflicting, we can only work with what we have available. Thus you should be sure to rely also on your own research, especially asking around. Find another end user of the make and model you need to know about. Do not make a decision solely on the basis of a FLAAR report because your situation may be totally different than ours. Or we may not have known about, and hence not written about, one aspect or another which is crucial before you reach your decision.

We are quite content with the majority of the specific printers, RIPs, media, and inks we have in the two FLAAR facilities at the two universities. We would obviously never ask for hardware, software, or consumables that we knew in advance would not be good. However even for us, a product which looks good at a tradeshow, sounds good in the ad literature, and works fine for the first few weeks, may subsequently turn out to be a lemon.

Equally often, what at first might be blamed on a bad product, usually turns out to be a need of more operator experi-ence and training. More often than not, after learning more about the product it becomes possible to produce what it was intended to produce.

But we can’t guarantee or certify any make or model nor its profitability in use because we don’t know the conditions under which a printer system might be utilized in someone else’s facility. As a result, products are described “as is” and without warranties as to performance or merchantability, or of fitness for a particular purpose. Any such statements in our reports or on our web sites or in discussions do not constitute warranties and shall not be relied on by the buyer in deciding whether to purchase and/or use products we discuss because of the diversity of conditions, materials and/or equipment under which these products may be used. Thus please recognize that no warranty of fitness or profitability for a particular purpose is offered.

The user is advised to test products thoroughly before relying on them. We do not have any special means of analyzing chemical contents of inks, media, or laminates, nor how these need to be controlled by local laws in your community. There may well be hazardous chemicals, or outgassing that we are not aware of. The user must assume the entire risk of ascertaining information on the chemical contents of inks, media or laminates as well as using any described hardware, software, accessory, service, technique or products.

mailto: [email protected]


We have no idea of your client’s expectations. What students on our campus will accept may not be the same as your Fortune 500 clients. In many cases we have not ourselves used the products but are basing our discussion on having seen them at a tradeshow, during visiting a print shop, or having been informed about a product via e-mail or other com-munication. Tradeshows are idealized situations, with full-time tech support to keep things running. The same equipment may not work as well in your facility as we, or you, see it at a tradeshow. All the more reason to test before you buy; and keep testing before you make your final payment. Your ultimate protection is to use a gold American Express credit card so you can ask for your money back if the product fails.

Heat, humidity, dust, experience level of your workers (whether they are new or have prior years experience): these are all factors that will differ in your place of business as compared with our two universities.

Actually you may have people with even more experience than we do, since we deliberately use students to approximate newbies. FLAAR is devoted to assisting newcomers learn about digital imaging hardware and software. This is why Nicholas Hellmuth is considered the “Johnny Appleseed” of wide format inkjet printers.

Therefore this report does not warranty any product for any quality, performance or fitness for any specific task, since we do not know the situation in which you intend to use the hardware or software. Nor is there any warranty or guar-antee that the output of these products will produce salable goods, since we do not know what kind of ink or media you intend to use, nor the needs of your clients. You will most likely need a color management system which implies color measurement tools and software. To handle ICC color profiles, you may need ICC color profile generation software and color measurement tools since often the stock pre-packaged ICC color profiles which come with the ink, media, printers and/or RIPs may not work in your situation. Not all RIPs handle color management equally, or may work better for some printer-ink-media combinations than for others.

Be aware that some RIPs can only accept ICC color profiles: you quickly find out the hard way that you can’t tweak these profiles nor generate new ones. So be sure to get a RIP which can handle all aspects of color management. Many RIPs come in different levels. You may buy one level and be disappointed that the RIP won’t do everything. That’s because those features you may be lacking are available only in the next level higher of that RIP, often at considerable extra cost. Same thing in the progression of Chevy through Pontiac to Cadillac, or the new Suburbans. A Chevy Suburban simply does not have all the bells and whistles of the Cadillac version of this SUV.

Don’t blame us… besides, that’s why we are warning you. This is why we have a Survey Form, so we can learn when you find products that are inadequate.

Be aware that some inks have severe health hazards associated with them. Some are hazardous to breath, others are hazardous if you get them on your skin. And most inks are clearly not intended to be consumed. Obviously these tend to be solvent inks and UV-curable inks. Yet other inks are edible, seriously, they are printed on birthday cakes. Indeed Sensient is a leader in a new era of edible inks.

Just remember that every machine has quirks, even the ones we like. It is possible that the particular kind of images, resolution, inks, media, or other factors in your facility are sufficiently different than in ours that a printer which works just fine for us may be totally unsatisfactory for you and your clients. However it may be that the specific kind of printing you need to do may never occasion that shortcoming. Or, it may be that your printer was manufactured on a Monday and has defects that are atypical, show up more in the kind of media you use which we may not use as often or at all during our evaluations. Equally possibly a printer that was a disaster for someone else may work flawlessly for you and be a real money maker for your company.

In some cases a product may work better on a Macintosh than on a PC. Software may function well with one operating system yet have bugs and crash on the same platform but with a different operating system. Thus be sure to test a printer under your own specific work conditions before you buy.

You absolutely need to do print samples with your own images and the kind provided by your clients. Do not rely on the stock photos provided by the printer, ink, media, or RIP manufacturer or reseller. They may be using special images which they know in advance will look fabulous on their printer. Equally well, if you send your sample images to the dealer, don’t be surprised if they come back looking awful. That is because many dealers won’t make a serious effort to tweak their machine for your kind of image. They may use fast speed just to get the job done (this will result in low quality). Check with other people in your area, or in the same kind of print business that you do. Don’t rely on references from the reseller or manufacturer (you will get their pet locations which may be unrealistically gushy): find someone on your own.

Another option is to bring your images on a CD disk to the FLAAR facility at BGSU. Here you can test your images on an Iris 3047 giclee printer (Ixia version), Mimaki JV4 (with textile inks for silk), either of two ColorSpan printers (Display-Maker XII, Mach 12, HP 5000 (essentially same quality as the HP 5500 which is primarily faster). We also have a Canon W7250, Epson 5500, Epson 7600, HP 120nr and the HP 20ps. If you are curious to see your images on a color laser, we have 13 x 19inch color output available on a QMS-Minolta 6110. Such a visit is treated as a consultation which implies a 1-day minimum consulting fee plus the ink and media used.

Although we have found several makes and models to work very well in our facilities, how well they work in your facili-ties may also depend on your local dealer. Some dealers are excellent; others just sell you a box and can’t provide much service after the sale. Indeed some low-bid internet sales sources may have no technical backup whatsoever. If you pay low-bid price, you can’t realistically expect special maintenance services or tech support later on from any other dealer (they will tell you to return to where you paid for the product). This is why we make an effort to find out which dealers are recommendable. Obviously there are many other dealers who are also good, but we do not always know them. To protect


yourself further, always pay with a level of credit card which allows you to refuse payment if you have end up with a lemon. A Gold American Express card allows you to refuse payment even months after the sale. This card may also extend your warranty agreement in some cases (check first).

Most of the readers of the FLAAR Reports look to see what printers we use in our own facilities. Readers realize that we will have selected the printers that we like based on years of experience and research. Indeed we have met people at trade shows who told us they use the FLAAR web site reports as the shopping list for their corporate purchases.

Yes, it is rather self-evident that we would never ask a manufacturer to send a product which we knew in advance from our studies was no good. But there are a few other printers which are great but we simply do not have them in our facili-ties yet. For example there are three Mimaki printers we would love to have (their flatbed, their newest textile printer, their new UV-curable ink printer)

We would definitely like to have a Gradco Mammoth (flatbed up to 3 inches). Would like to evaluate an Encad NovaJet 880 to print on thick material (up to half an inch if I remember correctly).

When Roland finally comes out with an 8 color version of Epson’s 10000 printhead generation which offers 32 passes, wider than Epson’s 44 inch limit and no banding whatsoever (if that is possible) that would be the ultimate fine art giclee printing factory. But since that printer does not yet exist, the art students on our campus use our HP DesignJet 5000ps, newly arrived HP 5500ps and ColorSpan Mach 12. The art department does museum exhibits and wins awards with the output.

We are also interested in the Western Graphtec cutter-printer with eight heads (their new model as of year 2001).

So if a printer is not made available by its manufacturer, then there is no way we can afford to have all these makes and models in our facility. Thus to learn about models which we do not feature, be sure to ask around in other print shops, with IT people in other corporations, at your local university or community college. Go to tradeshows….but don’t use the booth…ask questions of people in the elevator, in line at the restaurant, anywhere to escape the smothering hype you get in the booth.

Taking into consideration we do not know the conditions in which you may be using your hardware, software, or consum-ables, neither the author nor FLAAR nor either university is liable for liability, loss or damage caused either directly or

indirectly by the suggestions in this report nor by hardware, software, or techniques described herein because.

Acknowledgements

Fortunately the two universities cover most of the operating costs of FLAAR on their campus. Thus we do not really have much incen-tive to pocket hush money from producers of lousy products nor special funding from companies who make the better products. We feel that the pros and cons of each product speak more than adequately for themselves. Just position the ad claims on the left: put the actual performance results on the right. The unscrupulous hype is fairly evident rather quickly.

With 20 employees the funding has to come from somewhere, so although the universities cover the core expenses, we do welcome sponsorship, grants, and project-oriented funding from manufac-turers. Fortunately, our budget is lean and cost effective as you would expect for a non-profit research institute. As long as we are not desperate for money we can avoid the temptation to accept payment for reprinting corporate PR hype. So the funding is used for practical research. We do not accept (nor believe) and certainly do not regurgitate corporate PR. For example, how many manufacturer’s PR photos of their products have you seen in our reports or on our web sites?

Besides, it does not take any money to see which printers function as advertised and which don’t. We saw one hyped printer grind to a halt, malfunction, or otherwise publicly display its incapabilities at several tradeshows in a row. At each of those same tradeshows another brand had over 30 of their printers in booths in virtually every hall, each one producing museum quality exhibits. Not our fault when we report what we see over and over and over again. One of our readers wrote us recently, “Nicholas, last month you recommended the …… as one of several possible printers for our needs; we bought this. It was the best capital expenditure we have made in the last several years. Just wanted to tell you how much we appreciate your evaluations….”

We thank ColorSpan, Hewlett-Packard, Parrot Digigraphic, Canon, Scarab Graphics, ITNH, and ProVar LLC for providing funding for technology training for the FLAAR staff and our colleagues at Bowling Green State University and Universidad Francisco Marroquin. Grant funds from these companies are also used to improve the design and appearance of the web sites of the FLAAR Information Network. We thank Canon, ColorSpan and HP for providing wide format printers to the two universities where FLAAR does research on wide format digital imaging. We thank Epson America for providing a printer to our facilities at Francisco Marroquin University and Parrot Digigraphic for providing two different models of Epson inkjet


printers to our facilities at BGSU. We thank Mimaki USA for providing a JV4 and then a Mimaki TX-1600s textile printer and Improved Technologies (ITNH) providing their Ixia model of the Iris 3047 giclee printer.

We thank 3P Inkjet Textiles and HP for providing inkjet textiles so we could learn about the different results on the various textiles. IJ Technologies, 3P Inkjet Textiles, ColorSpan, Encad, HP, Nan Ya Pepa, Oracal, Tara and other companies have provided inkjet media so we can try it out and see how it works (or not as the case may be; several inkjet media failed miserably, one from Taiwan, the other evidently from Germany!). We thank Aurelon, ColorGate, ColorSpan, HP, Perfect-Proof, PosterJet, Onyx, Ilford, ScanvecAmiable, Wasatch and many other RIP companies for providing their hardware and software RIPs.

We thank Dell Computers for providing awesome workstations for testing RIP software and content creation with Adobe Photoshop and other programs. We also appreciate the substantial amount of software provided by Adobe. As with other product loaned or provided courtesy of ProVar LLC (especially the 23” monitors which makes it so much easier to work on multiple documents side by side).

We really liked some of the results whereas some of the other products were a bit disappointing. Providing samples does not influence the evaluations because the evaluators are students, profes-sors, and staff of Bowling Green State University and Francisco Marroquin University. These personnel are not hired by any inkjet printer company; they are universities employees (as is also true for Nicholas Hellmuth). The testing person for the HP ColorPro (desktop printer) said he frankly preferred his Epson printer. When we saw the rest results we did not include this Heweltt-Packard ColorPro printer on our list of recommended printers, but we love our HP DesignJet 5000ps so much we now have two of them, one at each university.

Some of the media provided to us failed miserably. Three printers failed to meet common sense usability and printability standards as well (HP 1055, one older desktop model, and one Epson). Yet we know other users who had better results; maybe ours came down the assembly line on a Monday or Friday afternoon, when workers were not attentive. One costly color management software package was judged “incapable” by two reviewers (one from the university; second was an outside user who had made the mistake of buying this package).

So it’s obvious that providing products or even a grant is no shield from having your products fail a FLAAR evaluation. The reason is clear: the end user is our judge. The entire FLAAR service program is to assist the people who need to use digital imaging hardware and software. If a product functions we find out and promulgate the good news. If a product is a failure, or more likely, needs some improvement in the next generation, we let people know. If a product is hyped by what an informed user would recognize as potentially false and misleading nonsense, then we point out the pathetic discrepancies very clearly.

This is what you should expect from an institute which is headed by a professor.

Actually, most of our reviews are based on comments by end users. We use their tips to check out pros and cons of virtu-ally every product we discuss. You can’t fool a print shop owner whose printer simply fails to function as advertised. And equally, a sign shop owner who earns a million dollars a year from a single printer brand makes an impact on us as well. We have multiple owners of ColorSpan printers tell us that this printer is their real money earner for example. We know other print shops where their primarily income is from Encad printers. Kinkos has settled on the HP 5000 as its main money maker production machine, and so on.

Yet we have documentation of several print shop companies whose business was ruined by specific brands that failed repeatedly. It is noteworthy that it is always the same two brands: one due to banding and printheads then simply no longer printing one color; the other brand due to pokiness of the printer simply not being competitively fast enough.

Grant funding, demonstration equipment, and training are supplied from all sides of the spectrum of printer equipment and software engineering companies. Thus, there is no incentive to favor one faction over another. We receive support from three manufacturers of thermal printheads (Canon, ColorSpan and HP) and also have multiple printers from two manufacturers of piezo printers (Epson and Mimaki). This is because piezo has definite advantage for some applications; thermal printheads have advantages in different applications. Our reviews have universal appeal precisely because we feature all competing printhead technologies. Every printer, RIPs, inks, or media we have reviewed have good points in addition to weaknesses. Both X-Rite and competitor GretagMacbeth provided spectrophotometers. Again, when all sides assist this program there is no incentive to favor one by trashing the other. Printer manufacturer ad campaigns are their own worst enemy. If a printer did not make false and misleading claims, then we would have nothing to fill our reviews with refuting the utter nonsense that is foisted on the buying public.

It is not our fault if some printers are more user friendly, print on more media than other brands. It is not our fault that the competing printers are ink guzzlers, are slow beyond belief, and tend to band or drop out colors all together. We don’t need to be paid by the printer companies whose products work so nicely in both our universities on a daily basis. The print-ers which failed did so in front of our own eyes and in the print shops of people we check with. And actually we do try to


find some redeeming feature in the slow, ink gulping brands: they do have a better dithering pattern; they can take thick media that absolutely won’t feed through an HP. So we do work hard at finding the beneficial features even of printers are otherwise get the most critique from our readers. Over one million people will read the FLAAR Information Network in the next 12 months; 480,000 people will be exposed to our reports on wide format printers from combined total of our three sites on these themes. You can be assured that we hear plenty of comments from our readers about which printers function, and which printers fail to achieve what their advertising hype so loudly claims.

We turn down offers of funding every month. These offers come from PO Box enterprises or products with no clearly vis-ible point of manufacture. Usually the company making the offer presumes they can buy advertising space just by paying money. But that is not what our readers want, so we politely do not accept such offers of money.

Grant funding is, however, open to a company who has an accepted standing in the industry. It is helpful if the company has a visible presence at leading tradeshows and can provide references from both end users and from within the industry. Where possible we prefer to visit the company in person or at least check them out at a tradeshow. Obviously the product needs to have a proven track record too. Competing companies are equally encouraged to support the FLAAR system. We feel that readers ought to have access to competing information. Competition is the cornerstone of American individual-ism and technological advancement.

FLAAR also covers it’s costs of maintaining the immense system of 12 web sites in three languages and its two university facilities in part by serving as a consultant such as assisting inkjet manufacturers learn more about the pros and cons of their own printers as well as how to improve their next generation of printers. FLAAR also serves as consultants to Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller companies and individuals who seek help on which printers to consider when they need digital imaging hardware and software.

All income helps continue our tradition of independent evaluations and reviews of inkjet printers, RIPs, media and inks.

Proprietary rights notice © Copyright January 2001, updated May 2001; updated July 2001; updated Oct 2001; updated May 2002; updated July 2002; updated September 2002; updated October 2002; updated November 2002, January 2003,

February 2003, June 2003, last updated September 2003

Please realize that all reports are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. The reader software is free from PDF files are intended to be read on your computer monitor. Naturally you can print them if you wish, but if the photographic images within the reports were high enough dpi for a 1200 dpi laser printer it would not be possible to download them. So the images are intended to be at monitor resolution, naturally in full color. FLAAR itself makes the files available only in PDF format because that is the international standard. We have no mechanism to print them out and mail them. Obviously if you have downloading problems we will try to help, but please realize that we assume you have a 56K modem (or better) and capabilities to handle a basic PDF file.

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