Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: <stevek@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 2:47 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Epson 7500 what inks should I use?

> Quick work! I hope MIS is just as quick to produce, I can think
of a
> couple people awaiting anxiously....
> > I'm not sure why the 7500 with the 7000 driver is producing
> slightly more
> > prominent dots than the 7000 and 9000 do with the MIS VM
inkset.
> Factors
> > could include the 100% pigment (no dye) composition of the UC
VM
> 4.3 inkset.
> > I suspect the small amount of dye that appears to be in the
older
> inkset
> > could have softened the edges of those dots.
>
> When I first ran my 7500 I had GEN 4 K in it, and it seemed
that
> made the problem worse, at least for me. Of course that ink
probably
> has a lot more dye in it that the "all pigment" blacks???
>
>   Finally, it could be
> > that the 7500 uses an increased head voltage that pumps out
more
> ink per
> > dot, making each dot darker.
>
> This one gets my vote, I think the machine is just set up to
spit
> out more black ink to make up for the whimpy D-max of the
Arc-K.

One of the few things that actually change in the 9000 to 9500
upgrade is the firmware. There are new hardware parts installed
but that is only to get rid of the old inks, the hardware parts
are the same 9000 parts. In the firmware there's an extra
cleaning setting + a higher voltage/frequency for the heads +
possibly other changes we are not aware of. At least the
identity: the XP 9500 Epson status monitor will not accept the
9000 as a substitute for a 9500, trying that right now so it may
be my fault. Can't find the 9000 Status Monitor for XP so far.

The paper settings in all the Epson drivers have a special
inklimit per setting. The variation is not that much however. In
the Wasatch SoftRip that I have you have to set that limit
yourself and then it is quite easy to get a far higher density of
the black and depending on the paper more or less bleed. So
having a 7000 or a 9000 doesn't mean that the max ink amount
printed is so hardware/firmware limitated that you can't use it.
GIMP-Print should be the cheap way to get a maximum inklimit
setting possible for a given ink/paper combination. My guess is
that the new UC + clones will bleed less due to the viscosity
difference and so the inklimit can be set higher than with dyes
or the first generation third party pigment inks.

In the 9000 Epson driver the 1440 settings give slightly more
black ink than 720 dpi, speed doesn't make any difference and
Photo Quality Glossy Paper gives a higher black density than
SemiGloss Photo paper. There's however more UCR or GCR done in
the Photo Quality Glossy paper setting so for colour printing so
this choice isn't always the nicest but hard edge colour printing
gets better with the PQGP setting including large black areas.
I've measured the differences for black only on German Etching
but do not have the absolute figures anymore. All minute
differences if compared to RIP inklimit changes.

> And then the fun began: I decided to scothch the
> whole thing, but discovered that I couldn't get rid of the
Linux
> bootloader. Before I figured out how, I tried 3 'repair
> installations' of Win XP, and the only thing that got
'repaired' was
> my internet connection, I no longer have one, and don't have
the
> option of setting up a new one. I am now online through a
second
> installation of Win XP on the drive that I had Linux.
Bah-humbug!

Had the same experience with a Suse trial maybe 2 years ago. In
the end I did a low level format of the disc on an Acorn Risc Os
machine, after that it was easy to get it ready for Windows
partitioning again. It is possible to get rid of it with other
means but I don't recall how. It should be in the Suse manuals.

Ernst