richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (08/07/87)
In article <923@hp-sdd.HP.COM> nick@hp-sdd.UUCP (Nick Flor) writes: >In article <1114@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >> >>Question to Nick Flor: What are the inks like in the HP ? Are they water or >>alcohol based ? >Water based. Nuts. >> Do you have the exact chemical makeup handy ? >No, but even if I did, that would be proprietary info. Noo noo noo. I dont care about the pigments. With the Xerox color inkjet, you get this manual, and one of the appendicies is a section on "chemical and biological hazard ratings", where they decribe the ink as being some large percentage water, small percentage propylene glycol and even smaller percentage pigment. They also mention the official Xerox inkjet cleaning fluid, the stuff you pay $10 for 70cc's, and gods help you if xerox catches you using anything else - is 100% water. >> Are your reds RED and blues BLUE ? >No, is anyones? But I believe we come closer than any comparably >priced printer. What I meant by this is, when you print rfRED (15, 0, 0), what color does it give you the impression of being. When Canon calls red sure looks like orange to me. And their blue is the color of grape juice. Now the xeorx has a slightly magenta looking red, and the blues are better. But the Tektronix 4296 (4692 ?) ! Now theres a RED! And a blue to die for. They seem to understand color. $7000 though... >> Any idea if HP inks can be used in another ink jet printer? >No. We use a disposable ink cartridge. Very easy to install. Not >even as messy as the competitors. The canon couldn't be easier to reload. Never spilt a drop of ink. The Xerox is less easy, but its predecessor, the Diablo, uggghhh. It would clog, it would leak, then it would clog again. Complete disaster. The xerox is in all fairness much better, but you still have to fil little ink pots from containers of ink. I have had 1 ink cartridge in my Canon for about a year now. That $%**@ Xerox eats $40 work of ink every week, and the paper is outrageously expensive. And hard to find. IBM used the canon guts in its color ink jet, so finding paper and ink is no real biggee. Costs about 1/2 much if you buy it from canon though. I think its about $50 for a three color ink cartridge and 4 rolls of paper. Any idea of the price/longevity of consumables for the PaintJet ? The reason I am interested in the ink composition is, the canon pigments suck bugs. I would like to be able to refill an empty cartridge (when I finally get one!) with inks as good as the Tek. Real reds, etc. Canon tolm me their inks are fine, and NO OTHERS will work. Now, I dont know a lot about chemistry, but it seems to me if I can find some inks that use the same carrier ans differ only in pigments, all I have to face is the mechanical problems of getting the ink in there without introducing a lot of air. >>The canons are stil available. >Yes, but what's the point of having a printer that does color if you >can't show off the output? That's like buying a thermal printer >instead of dot matrix. Sure the dot matrix output is good, but it's >not 5 times as good as thermal printing. However, you wouldn't turn >in thermal output to your boss, or for your research paper etc. Oh, I dont know, some of the thermals are so bad and the Dot-matricies are so good, I'd say some of them are 5X better than thermals :-) The Canon is pretty good, but you have to make allowences. First, its a 72 dpi device, so you are going to see spots of ink. Second, the colors are not real saturated, but there is a BOLD switch that does 2 pass printing that looks QUITE good. As for the color matching, well, it'd be *nice* if it were WYSIWYG, but you end up having to jack the colors around a bit, but you can tune it quite close. As a cheap, fast, color output preview device it is unparelled. For serious color output I use a Polaroid Palette color film recorder, and for text, I have a Postscript Laser. So no, the Canon is not a very good general purpose printer. It cant render text worth a ****, but for $199, Geez. One of the entries in the SIGGRAPH art show was done on an Amiga and printed on an "ink-jet printer" which had real familiar looking colors - it may have been the canon. >Based on your questions, it looks like you have a pretty good understanding >of ink-jet technology and it's limitations. Thanx. >I'll send you some output if you want. Is there any particular picture >on the Amiga that you'd like me to send you for comparison purposes? Oh, the mandrill and king tut. plus a picture that has all the primaries and secondaries, RGB, YCM, OPB, preferably as circles, overlapping. >Nick >-- >+ Disclaimer: The above opinions are my own, not necessarily my employers'. + >+ "What's going down in this world, | Nick V. Flor + >+ you got no idea. Believe me." | Hewlett Packard - San Diego Division + >+ "We came, we saw, we it's kicked *ss."| ..hplabs!hp-sdd!nick + BTW, your signature looks like shit on a 132 column terminal. -- Richard Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {akgua, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard "It's too dark to put the key in my ignition..."