RE: RE: Digital negatives for gum printing

[Larry Roohr <lrryr@home.com>]

Here's what I know:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Gerling [mailto:kgerling@ameritech.net]
> Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 4:59 PM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca
> Subject: RE: RE: Digital negatives for gum printing
>
>
> I'm excited by what I am hearing from many of you concerning the Cone
> process.  Even though I still have my doubts as to whether the Cone
> multitone on Pictorico process might not be overkill for printing gums,
> you've piqued my interest.   It is my understanding that Jon
> Cone's process
> only uses his inks, and that these are quite expensive.

My understanding is the piezo inks are on a par with the Lysonic's and such.
If you were printing quadtones and cared about longevity and metamerism then
you may not mind the price. A set of four oz bottles lasts me several months
but I only get to do this about one day a week on average. There is an
inkset on the MIS page set up for an 1160 that is faster drying than they're
regular quadtones (like the piezo inks). The guy who set up the workflow for
them has used the piezo driver with them but prefers the Epson driver, maybe
there's a reason for that, they sure are cheap.

  I am wondering if
> anybody can give a rough estimate on what it would cost to print a set of
> four negatives, say 11 " 14" using the Cone inks and Pictorico.

I think there's something about that on the website. I have heard the
numbers but don't remember.

Also, is
> this process fairly easy and reliable to use?  My problem with Epson (and
> judging by the volume of inquiries on the Epson printer list, I'm
> not alone)
> is one of unreliability on the part of the printer.  Speaking from
> experience, I would have to estimate that less that half of the ink that I
> currently use with my Epson printers goes onto usable negatives.  The rest
> is spent on banded prints, prints where a nozzle clogs halfway
> through, and
> with cleaning cycles.  With Epson offering new printers every other month,
> does Cone offer upgrade paths?  That is, can I buy the 1160 version and
> upgrade affordably to another model?
>
> Keith
>
>

All the Epson problems are there, in addition the piezo driver does not use
the Epson dither pattern which covers up a lot of printer problems, printers
that are not useable with the piezo will be fine with the Epson driver.
Recently Cone updated the drivers with a mode that took care of a lot of the
banding problems, many problem printers saw a great improvement. My
impression is that the great majority of 1160's are fine, the 3000's used to
be a nightmare but the new driver fixed many of them at the cost of very
long print times. If your having banding problems with the Epson inks and
driver you shouldn't try to use that printer with the piezo driver.

I've got my 1160 running pretty good now after running some Epson cleaning
sheets through it, the Banding is gone but I can clearly see the pattern the
Piezo driver lays down with a loupe, maybe I should give up loupes. I'll see
how the zia's look soon as I'm putting down black zia layers and then
gumming over that.

Larry