Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Joost Horsten" 


> 3) Fine art inkjet can do one-offs, gives great quality but is (way) 
> too expensive  
> 
> So my conclusion (at least for now) is: there's nothing (yet?) in the 
> sweet spot. No enterpreneur out there to convert an Indigo to quad-tone 
> printing? I'm your first customer!
> 
> Joost
>

The problem with inkjet is the lack of paper that is similar enough to
traditional book papers. None of the inkjet papers that I ever found
were thin enough to make a good book, let alone only single sided. I
had a couple that were close but not really what is needed. Had I
found that mystical missing paper I might have tried doing something
about the lack of short run B/W book printing.

And to get the indigo to print quads would require HP to make the ink
and modify the RIP.  Not sure they will invest the R&D to do this as
the return would be small. Now you might still be able to find one of
the digital Heidelberg presses around that would allow them use
traditional press inks to achieve the look (hopefully). I'm not sure
what the minimum dot size is for those Heidelberg presses, so it might
be worth looking into.

I did a little more looking into laser printers, and found that the
resolution seems to be limited by the process. I'm not sure if the
limitation lies with the toner or the transfer roller. The proof of
this was in a medical grade laser printer that uses film for the
output. Konica has several printers that can do down to 25 micro dots
and 16xxx+ shades of gray (14 bit I think?). They are probably
woefully expensive but it would be great for people printing digital
negatives.

In that digging I did not find a single mention of monochrome toners
lighter than black except for a few dye-sub heat transfer toners that
could do white toner after transfer. I didn't find any truly high
resolution B/W laser printers that could get by with really small dots
and stochastic screening. And I'm not totally convinced that dry toner
is a good answer, I guess that depends on how well the paper holds
onto the toner after the heat fusing.

What might be ideal is a UV cured liquid ink that can be charge so
that it can work in the electrophotographic process. That way you can
avoid the heat fusing that almost requires special papers and low
solvents to meet many new standards. It would be permanent, and you
can get pigments from black to white and just about everything in
between from Dupont. So far all the UV cure printers are terribly
expensive and not really set up for sheet fed styles of printing
(yet). Too bad there are no inkjet UV cure printers in the Epson price
ranges, and too bad the ink would destroy the standard printheads (so
I'm told).