Digital BW, The Print

Tom Baker wrote:

>While your overall complaint is probably correct, I can well imagine that the pressurized carts and chips are actually done to keep the cost of the printers down.  It has to be cheaper/easier to pressurize all the carts with the air from a single pump than putting in individual pumps for each ink.  The chips are certainly the easiest way to know when the ink supply is about to run out.  This may be critical to avoiding damage to the head.
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>Tom Baker
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There are good reasons to use pressurised carts and a single air pump. A 
simple way of keeping the ink pressure at the atmospheric pressure at 
head height is one of them. No liguid pump(s) in the inklines needed. It 
also doesn't prevent the use of third party inks in the carts as the MIS 
7600 inks in my 10000 shows. A lot of 10000's around with third party ink.

The chips are there to keep third party suppliers out of business. The 
old 9000s have a far simpler way of ink control and it worked 99% of the 
time with little ink left in the carts.

The whining about too little R&D in this inkjet industry  isn't based on 
facts. 10 years ago we wouldn't have thought possible what is now 
everyday's work: printing color and B&W without a darkroom.  With a 
quality in every aspect that's better than what is now possible with 
photochemical processes. More competition in digital  printing than in 
the days of analogue photography. And a leading company that knows it 
has to deliver archival quality if it wants to ask the higher price. 
This isn't the end of that development either. Anyone with a desire to 
return to the darkroom and make color prints with Kodak supplies ?

Ernst