Ink Blots

Does D-Roller really work?

Michael Frye posted this question recently on the Yahoo “digital-fineart” discussion group:

I just saw a good review of the D-Roller on Luminous Landscape, but I want to see if any of you have used it, and if so what you think of it. For those who don’t know, the D-Roller is designed to take paper curl out of prints. I tried making my own version a couple of years ago, but ended up thinking it was more trouble than it was worth. Although it did take out paper curl, it was only temporary - the paper would gradually re-curl. I gather that the D-Roller works better with rag papers, but since I’m using mostly Epson Premium Luster, I’d like to hear from someone who’s using something similar. Also, I found that with my home-made version it was very easy to dent the paper if you weren’t careful, and if there was any dust inside the roller it got embedded into the print. Any advice would be appreciated!

We have two D-Rollers (24” and 50” models) in our Bair Art Editions studio, and wouldn’t be without them!  Like Michael mentioned, they are most effective on rag or even wood pulp papers, like Epson’s Enhanced Matte.  They are less effective on photo papers that have an “plastic” RC or polyethylene barrier layer like the Epson Premium papers, but they are still useful even here.

Most of d-rolling (reverse rolling) is done after people do their printing, but some people use use the D-Roller to uncurl sections of roll stock so they can feed longer sheets into their printers for panoramic prints. This is helpful if you have an inkjet printer like the Epson Stylus Photo 3800 that doesn’t accept roll paper, but can still print on stock up to 37 inches long.

I’ve also tried to make my own “d-roller” out of a 1.5” diameter PVC pipe, but it wasn’t as effective.  This patented product has just the
right “apron” (so as not to dent or leave a crease line on the paper) and anti-breaking strips on the sides to make it be more serviceable than my homemade contraption.

The longer you leave the paper rolled up in the D-Roller (1-60 sec.) the more curl you will take out of the sheet. Soft rag papers usually only take about 10 seconds, but smooth (more calendared) papers will take longer, because these fibers retain more or their curl memory. You can de-curl the paper too much and make it curl in the opposite direction, but this rarely lasts for very long—there is typically some latent memory in the paper, and it will often lay flat within a few minutes. In fact, with some of the more calendared papers, like Epson’s UltraSmooth and Enhanced Matte, I will often leaved them d-rolled for a few minutes—enough to make them curl the opposite direction when they are un-rolled, and they will relax to the flat position within minutes. If I don’t apply this extra d-rolling time, they come out looking flat at first, but start to take on some of their natural curl position within a few minutes.

While the D-Roller is very quick and effective, I have found that d-rolling a long production run of prints can be very labor intensive. Whenever I have a large order, and some extra time, I will just reverse-roll the whole printing job on an empty 3-inch roll paper core tube, wrap some scrap paper around the roll, tape it securely so it doesn’t unwind and leave it for several hours or overnight. Reverse-rolling this way is not as quick (as the smaller diameter D-Roller) in breaking the paper’s curl memory, but it is usually just as effective over this longer time period. (Some of the large-format printers have automatic take-up rollers that offer reverse-roll winding. Prices for these accessories start at about $1,000.)

For most jobs of one to ten prints, the D-Roller is just the ticket. For more information, you can go to the D-Roller Web site, or to one of their major online dealers, like Inkjetart.

Posted by Royce Bair on 04/26 at 07:31 AM
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Big head - amazing speed

I’m talking about a BIG inkjet print head. Really big—a nozzle array that’s a full 8 inches wide, with 70,400 ink nozzles! This microscope photo shows a tiny section of the print head, and each of the small white circles is a single ink nozzle.

The ink nozzles are arranged in lines, with 1600 nozzles per inch. These can produce more than 2.5 million ink dots per square inch of paper in a single pass. These tiny nozzles can fire out ink droplets smaller than one picoliter. With this size of a printhead, it doesn’t need to move back and forth to make passes like ordinary printheads. Instead, the paper is just transport past the stationary printhead at a speed of one letter-size (A4) page per second, or 60 pages per minute. (The video clips are so amazing, you might at first think this is a hoax, but the folks at Lyra Research assure us that it’s legitimate!)

This new Memjet inkjet printer technology, that analysts believe will revolutionize the imaging industry, was unveiled last month by Silverbrook Research, and published in an article by texyt.com. Silverbrook says some of the Memjet Technology printers should be ready for the consumer market by the end of this year, starting with a 100mm (4-inch wide) printhead that will be used for home and retail photo printing as well as label printing devices. An A4/Letter printhead should be available in 2008.

The Memjet Technology may be licensed to manufacturers such as HP, Canon and others. Silverbrook expects the printers to eventually cost $200 or less. Silverbrook has plans for a $150, desktop photo printer that can print 30 photos per minute. By comparison, a single 4x6 inkjet print takes about 30 seconds to over a minute to print on most current desktop photo inkjet printers.

The only other inkjet printer able to print anywhere close to this speed is HP’s huge new Edgeline printer, but these printers start at $16,000 and can not be purchased (instead, the company will make customers purchase printing services, rather than the product itself).

HP’s Edgeline printer has a full-width nozzle array design similar to the Memjet, but at about one-half to one-third the speed of the Memjet Technology. That’s still about as fast as a laser printer! Right now, the Edgeline technology is only available for HP’s large copy shop type printers, but this may soon become the death of the big office laser printers. The Memjet Technology could soon compete with small office and home lazer printers.

Posted by Royce Bair on 04/20 at 09:24 AM
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Tiny URLs

How does one handle those looooong Web links?

Are you tired of posting URLs in emails and on discussion groups only to have it break when sent, which causes the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together?

Solution: My friend, Andrew Darlow, recently told me how to convert those long URLs to short ones using TinyURL.com

Example: Here’s the URL link to Epson’s Web site for the page that lists the drivers and downloads for their Epson Stylus Pro 3800:

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=79928&prodoid=63062509&infoType=Downloads&platform=All

This URL has a length of 134 characters, but within just a few seconds the TinyURL.com Web site was able to convert that long URL to a length of only 25 characters:

http://tinyurl.com/yum43g

... a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires. The service is free, and it only takes seconds.

Postscript: Here’s a 212 character Yahoo Maps URL (I’ll spare you the actual link) to a map of my office in Salt Lake City that TinyURL converted to only 25 characters: http://tinyurl.com/2hz5s6

Posted by Royce Bair on 04/18 at 10:56 AM
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Fujifilm enters industrial inkjet market

The Wall Street Journal announced on April 9th, in a one-paragraph statement, that Fujifilm was going to enter the industrial inkjet printing market this month. They will start in the U.S.A. and expand later into Europe and Japan. Fujifilm hopes to produce about $168 million in sales of new printers and ink by the business year 2009-2010. The Japanese photographic film maker will buy their printers from a division of Mutoh Holdings and the Netherlands-based Oce NV. Fuji’s ink cartrdges will be made by the U.K.-based Sericol Group Ltd., which Fuji acquired in 2005.

If I’m not mistaken, Mutoh also makes the 9800 and 7800 Stylus Pro inkjet printers for Epson. The “industrial” inkjet printers that Mutoh and Oce are going to be making for Fujifilm appear to be very large ("grand") format inkjet printers, and will probably be using outdoor solvent inks.

I couldn’t find any news releases from Fujifilm about their new venture.

Posted by Royce Bair on 04/13 at 07:57 AM
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HP Designjet Z6100 Specs

HP Designjet Z6100 - the 60” model is pictured on the left, and the 42” model on the right.

This is HP’s replacement for the popular Designjet 5000 and 5500. HP came out with their Designjet 5500 the same year (2001) that Epson introduced their model 10000 Stylus Pro printer. Both printers were slated as “fast”, but the HP truly was faster for most banner and sign production work—about twice as fast. Despite HP’s apparent speed, Epson was quick to point out that when the HP 5500 was printing at its best photo quality setting, the Epson 10000’s comparable quality setting was faster (and Epson was right). In fact, for professional “photo lab” quality printing, the Epson was much better, and the model 10000 still had two additional higher-quality printing settings for the really critical eye—endearing it (and the 9600 and 9800 models that followed) it to photographers and fine artists.

The HP Designjet Z2100 and HP Designjet Z3100 series printers that HP introduced last Fall were HP’s answer to Epson’s 9800 and 7800 printers, and they offer some additional features Epson doesn’t have, i.e. full-time dual-black ink (matte and photo) plumbing.

Despite HP’s impressive line-up, they still needed a “photographic” printer that was also speedy enough (and wide enough) to attract those in the banner, sign and display industry. The new Z6100 appears to meet that need with its “Double Swath” printing technology—yet it still might have the quality to satisfy the critical, photo “print sniffers” and fine artists. If this is the case, HP will have a great cross-over product with the Z6100.

Here is HP’s 4-page Data Sheet (1.7MB PDF) for the Designjet Z6100.

I do not have a manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the 60” and 42” models, but might have it later this week…

Posted by Royce Bair on 04/10 at 10:13 AM
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New HP Designjet Z6100 Printer series

I received this HP news release from Mary Poniatowski today:

On April 10, 2007, HP will announce a new family of printers for customers producing posters, banners, maps and fine art: the HP Designjet Z6100 Printer series.

This printer is fast!  It provides twice the performance of an HP Designjet 5500 printer, achieving amazing new speeds with outstanding accuracy.  This is possible due to HP technical breakthroughs such as the new HP Double Swath technology and the first ever Optical Media Advance Sensor. 

The new HP Designjet Z6100 Printer series provides exceptional color and fade resistance with eight HP Vivera pigment inks.  The printer delivers a wide color gamut with true neutral grays and produces prints that resist fading for one year in a window and 200 years or more when not placed in direct sunlight. This product will be ideal for photo and fine art customers with higher production needs.

The HP embedded spectrophotometer provides accurate color calibration to deliver unparalleled color consistency print-to-print and printer-to-printer.  The HP Easy Printer Care Tool also lets you easily navigate through color-management, printing and job-management. 

These printers are expected to begin shipping in late May and are available in both 42-inch and 60-inch models, with or without an Adobe PostScript RIP.

HP Photo and Fine Arts partners can expect to see the Designjet Z6100 added to the program as a sales based rebate.

I plan to provide more information tomorrow, as it is unveiled from HP…

Posted by Royce Bair on 04/09 at 07:43 AM
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