Digital BW, The Print

On Nov 7, 2010, at 12:58 PM, tboleyyh wrote:

> I don't know what the price would be for the mystery printer

There have been third party companies who have licensed the big three's inkjet technologies and sold printers for specialty markets; in fact, at one time thats the only way one could get Epson heads in a wide format machine. Traditionally these specialty printers have cost more (we're talking a lot more) than the printer models from the big three. Approaching one of these companies with the idea of supplying a moderately priced machine for the B&W market would be interesting. 

This would be one of their more affordable printer models, configured for standard pigment inks, without a need for a huge number of channels (though there's no reason not to fill up whatever channels exist already), perhaps with support from the same company's RIP, but also with the intent of it being driven by QTR (which kinda implies an Epson-based system). It would be an open device, with no chip limitations. Anyone ever asked Mutoh, Kodak (who acquired Encad years ago) or any of the other companies if they would be interested in developing a market plan to see if this is feasible at a pricepoint that would not put it out of the hands of the end users it would be intended for? I haven't met with any of these companies for at least a couple of years, so I have no real sense of their current situations.

C. David Tobie
Global Product Technology Manager
Digital Imaging & Home Theater
CDTobie@...

  ----------


Datacolor
www.datacolor.com/Spyder3





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]