Digital BW, The Print

Roy, you wrote

>I'm not so sure you'd benefit from using the more inkjets for BO
printing but it's hard to know for sure.  If you had a printer
that had
inconsistent jets using more different jets might help in banding
problems though.   If you could intelligently (i.e. custom
special
driver) do the microweave algorithms you might be able to get a
speed improvement.<

With enough nozzles available there will be a choice of speed or
quality, I have no idea what is needed in new drivers then, there
are lower resolution settings already available. With a new
driver and single head BO you could achieve better weaving with
N-passes but the speed would be much lower. There's always a
compromise between speed and quality. But lower speed also adds
in more drying time so less bleed = quality.

I guess all the 672 nozzles of the 960 for BO would be over the
top. Reserve 3 heads for CMY and the rest for black and there's
some colourprinting left including toning. The C84 seems a more
likely candidate though. The Gimp-print driver is in its early
stages.

Whether one should give the black heads the same black head curve
"ramps" is another issue. If there's more than one droplet size
left it may be wiser to change the ramp's angles a bit so the
droplet shifts fall in different greysteps. That will even out
another inconsistency.

Epson could make a nice BO printer with one cart and a head with
300 to 400 nozzles, 1.5 picoliter minimum droplets. But is it
wise to make a printer for 35 mm B&W printing ?-)

The 4000 has two 180 nozzles black heads but you can't use them
simultaneously with the existing drivers, Gimp-print could if
there's no real hardware/firmware blockade. 3.5 picolitre is not
fine enough though.

Ernst