Digital BW, The Print

Hey Paul,     
I've heard this idea before and it seems to be gathering steam. The 
Canons would make a pretty good platform but not without their own 
issues. Since the printhead is thermal instead of peizoelectric it 
has more limitations on the ink materials it can print. Thermal heads 
also burn out a lot easier too- especially if they run without ink. 
Other than that the new Canon printers would probably work pretty 
well. As far as competion for Canon and Epson they couldn't care less 
about the quad black users. If it's not thier ink/cartridges they 
don't even want anyone using the printers- thus the warranty void 
warnings and such. They also consider what we are doing as a "nich" 
use/market that isn't worth their attention. And certianly not worth 
a price war. Since the inks and carts are coming from third parties 
you will probably easily find someone out there interested in 
supplying inks- the prostitutes ;). A possible pitfall to 
diversifying platforms is that with each new printer platform and 
inkset a whole new set of curves and workflows need to be created. 
Before you know it B&W printing could go like so many other 
technologies and be so diversified that the different users end up 
suffering issues like we have with IBM VS. MAC -incompatibility. OK 
preaching over hope I didn't bore you to death. I have tested the 
Piezography inks (probably not your favorite I would guess but I'm 
kinda stuck with gen 1 for the moment) in a Canon 4000 and found that 
they work quite well. A few mods and you could have a working quad 
system pretty easily.      


Jeff

<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> Has anyone had any experiences with the Canon printers?
> 
> As you know, I'm a big fan of competition.  So, if there is an 
alternate
> printer for third party inks -- B&W quads in particular -- it would 
seem to
> be a real boon to those of us on this list.
> 
> MIS has told me they are getting strong demand for quadtone inks for
> the Canon S800, S900, S9000 printers.  They are just finishing a
> Continuous Flow set up for them.   I
> 
> MIS thinks Canon has done a good job in trying  to come up to the 
Epson
> standard.  If Epson is a 10 on the zero to 10 scale, then the new 
Canon
> printers are a 9 + in MIS's opinion.
> 
> Some attractive characteristics of the Canon machines include that 
refilling
> is easy, with no foam problems like the Epson's, and there are
> no chips to deal with.  Moreover, each color has it's own cartridge 
and
> they are see through.
> 
> Any opinions or interest in these machines?  I'm thinking a "no 
curves,"
> modified FS-Neutral inkset might be a way to get the ball rolling 
in giving
> Epson a little competition in our area of interest.
> 
> Any opinions or interest in these machines or quad inksets for them?
> 
> Paul
> http://www.PaulRoark.com