Digital BW, The Print

Martin,

You know I'm not an ink chemist by now - I don't even know what a surfactant
is (tho' I understand that my washing powder has non-ionic ones - cool!  ;)

But it surprises me that you seem to expect that 'all inks are the same' -
you know I don't mean it quite like that, and I know you don't mean it quite
like that - but aren't we talking a balancing act here? A balance between
colour/tone, amount of pigment or dye on the page without first soaking the
page in thinner or carrier solution or whatever it's called.

e.g. One way to solve the problem might be to thin the inks... but the cost
of this might be to have a 5 minute pause between print-head passes for some
thinner to off-gas - IF you wanted to achieve the same level of colourant on
the page without ruffling. Or perhaps it has no effect on that, but reduced
ink shelf-life... or whatever.

This is clearly an area that you and Terry in particular know much more than
I on the technical front - but when I read your recent comments it _sounds_
to me like you think that all these problems can be resolved without
undesireable consequences that you might find equally objectionable!

Nij



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Wesley [mailto:mwesley250@...]
>
>
> Nij,
>
> I agree with you that the "clogs" that we all talk about are very
> likely air bubbles for the most part. (probably not the severe Hayes
> issue though it could be related.) This is why the "wait and let it
> settle" process works so well. Which does lead me to feel that it is
> a formulation issue. If there was more surfactant in the formula
> perhaps this would not be such a common problem.
>
> I was very happy to hear Jon has gotten an ink chemist on board.
> Hopefully the issues are easy ones and can be resolved quickly.
>
> Martin
>