The Road to Sublimation Success

other brands of inkjet printers such as HP, Canon and Lexmark). Since sublimation inks are heat-activated, boiling the ink out of the nozzle just won’t work— but vibrating it out does. This is why piezo print heads are so important, and why Epson is the dominant printer man- ufacturer in this industry. That is, until several months ago when things changed radically for the better—and will never be the same again. Ricoh’s GX5050N and GX7000 For some eight years, using the Law piezo printers. of Attraction, I’ve thought about what the perfect sublimation printer would be: Inexpensive (under $300 for letter/ legal and under $1,000 for tabloid), highly reliable (high duty cycle of 10K prints per month), built-in ink system The Road To with large cartridges, wickedly fast (like a laser printer), and expandable paper handling (more paper trays). Finally, after Sublimation Success all this time, we now have printers like this and from a surprising source—Ricoh! Full Throttle: Move Over Epson! Although I had visited Ricoh several times early in my career, I was unaware By David Gross they made inkjet printers until last year. Most people know them for their copiers. “’But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked. Meet The Family ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’ We have adopted two printers from the GX series (which is Ricoh’s second ‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice. generation after the G series inkjet printers): the GX5050N and GX7000. ‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’” They are a perfect fit for our world and fit my wish list like a glove. They are - Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland low-cost, wickedly fast piezo printers! “ Ricoh has several key differences from hree things: computer, printer and of the process, with Epson being the Epson. First is their market focus. Epson heat press. These are the main com- only desktop choice, has offered the goes after the photo market and Ricoh T ponents of the sublimation transfer least variety and has been the slowest after the office market. The office market process. Every year that goes by we see to evolve. requires lots of speed, paper capacity, reli- changes and advances in these three areas. Why have we always used Epson ability, and high duty cycle. Their ink Computers get better, faster and (unlike printers for desktop sublimation” transfer? technology is called Gel, which is just most other things) cheaper (check out Three reasons: they are inexpensive, they a thicker, more concentrated ink. They Moore’s Law sometime at Intel’s website). are easy to buy, and Epson has been the also use a paper transport system that Software advances include CorelDRAW® only major name to use piezo print head comes right out of their laser printer X4 (version 14) and Adobe® Photoshop® technology. Piezo printing technology design handbook (see the sidebar below CS4 (version 11). Heat presses have gone vibrates the ink out of the nozzle instead titled Ricoh’s Secret To Speed). Visit digital. What about printers? I person- of boiling it out like thermal drop-on- www.gelsprinter.com for great info on ally think that the printer component demand technology does (used in most Ricoh’s technology.

Reprinted from THE SUBLIMATION ALMANAC 2009 Ricoh’s Secret To Speed size. So think of it: with a fully loaded 7000, printers with our profile under Windows 7. Taken right out of the laser printer play- we can have three different paper sizes loaded The PowerDriver is Sawgrass’ tradi- book, the Gel printers use a permanent at the same time! No more swapping papers tional solution for SubliJet users. It pro- electrostatic belt to hold and move the in a single tray. No more forgetting to load vides the color management features inside paper while printing. This belt allows both legal paper when doing Unisub license plates this printer driver. When you print to the very high speed and precision printing. or 13”x19” for large glass cutting boards. PowerDriver, it corrects the colors and then From a green point of view, these You can even program the size of each paper sends the print data to the Gel driver. So you printers are perfect for printing because into the front panel so that the printer auto- must install the Gel driver also. At publica- they use ink (no drum units or belts to clog matically pulls your chosen paper size from tion, the PowerDriver was only available for the landfills), consume very little electricity the correct tray. This really works well in a the 7000 for Windows XP and Vista 32 bit. (they don’t need a fuser unit to melt toner multi-user environment. For selecting spot colors, I recom- onto the paper), and because Condé offers mend reading my article: “Street Smart an ink cartridge recycling program. Print Quality Color Matching” published in a previous I typically ignore printer specs and Sublimation Almanac. It is posted on our The Need For Speed instead judge printer output with my eyes. web site: www.conde.com. Our two printers are true speed demons. When comparing the two on hard and soft My tests put Epson printers to shame (see substrates, it’s difficult for me to tell the Front Control Panel Chart #1: Print Speed Comparisons). difference. On paper, the Ricoh printers And Display deliver 1200 dpi quality. The Epson printers, Both printers provide a display similar Chart #1: Print Speed Comparisons capable of 1440 dpi printing, are set to 720 to what we find on the Epson 4000 series dpi mode for sublimation transfer. I do printers. Some good news is that the display Ricoh Ricoh Epson Epson Epson recommend that each new installation run shows current ink levels, but the bad news GX5050N GX7000 1400 4800 4880 through the “Paper Feed Adjustment” to is that the levels are not accurate—showing 8.5"x11" :12 :25 1:51 1:48 1:45 align the printer. This reduces the banding lower ink levels than reality. For example, that sometimes can be seen on the Gel one bar represents 20%, but it really means 11"x17" N/A :44 3:10 2:55 2:48 printers. that the ink level is between 20-39%. To find the exact levels, we need to go into the Interestingly, the GX5050N prints about Color Management service mode of the printer (if you really twice as fast as the GX7000. This appears In order for photographs and spot colors need this, give me a call). In addition, we to be because of a larger print head. The to print correctly, we need color manage- can define what size paper is in each tray, GX5050N was designed before the GX7000 ment. What does color management do? perform a nozzle check, head cleaning, or and was designed to win the speed contest. Sublimation inks and normal inks work very print head alignment—all from the front These printers are fast enough to finally differently, so we have to limit the amount panel. meet my goal of true on-site event printing. of ink used in the correct proportion to get You’ll be able to easily produce products the right results. We offer two solutions: Inks: The Blood Of while at pet shows, car shows, and other ICC profile or PowerDriver. Sublimation events. ICC color profiles are the industry stan- These printers use the new SubliJet-R dard way of handling colors with printers, inks from Sawgrass. This unique higher Paper Handling scanners and monitors. At Condé, we have viscosity ink formulation (called Gel ink) Each printer has one built-in paper tray our own color department that creates color is loaded into four fairly large cartridges. with a 250-sheet capacity. The 5050N sup- profiles for sublimation. We provide profiles The CMY cartridges hold 60ml of ink and ports letter and legal size paper, and the 7000 for both the 7000 and the 5050N. These the K holds 65ml. supports sizes up to 11”x17”. Unlike Epson profiles are used with the Gel driver and are Question: Since the Gel printers only printers, the Ricoh printers can grow with supported under all versions of Windows have four colors, how does this compare with optional paper trays. Each printer supports 2000, XP, Vista 32 and 64 bit versions, and six- and eight-color printers? Answer: Very an extra bottom tray (500-sheet for the Macintosh OSX. ArTainium ink users are little difference. This is because the extra 5050N and 250-sheet for the 7000) and a familiar with ICC profiles. Since ICC pro- colors are diluted versions of the other inks multi-bypass tray attached to the back (100- files use the standard Ricoh driver, all fea- and do nothing to extend the color gamut sheet capacity). The 7000’s multi-bypass tray tures of the printer and options are available. or range. They only serve to improve the supports our all-important 13”x19” paper As a footnote, I am already running the Gel lights and mid-tones of photographs. Since

Reprinted from THE SUBLIMATION ALMANAC 2009 The Gel printers use a permanent electrostatic belt to hold and The Road To move the paper while printing, which allows very high speed Sublimation Success and precision printing. we print with the medium-quality mode than Epson’s, the printhead was ml, the Gel series printer’s cost of on normal paper and then sublimate, it is designed for high speed/high volume printing is less than half of Epson’s just about impossible to take advantage of applications, and the built-in ink desktop printers! those extra colors. Fewer colors mean it is system. No matter what the reason, simpler and costs less! the results are impressive. Yes, you Connectivity When installing the first set of inks, still need to do a nozzle check at the Both printers support a USB the printer will pull lots of ink from the beginning of every print day and whenever 2.0/1.1 port. The 5050N has an cartridges to fill the ink tubes (see Chart you suspect there is an issue. I do recom- Ethernet 10/100 built-in, with this being #2: Percentage Of Cartridge Ink Used To mend products like Harvey Head Cleaner an option on the 7000. Since the printer Charge The Ink Lines). Although charging to do an automatic print on days when the supports multiple trays, this really becomes the ink lines leaves your cartridges looking printer is not in use. a network printer capable of multi-user drained, the inks have merely moved from printing. one spot to another. Charging the ink lines Paper won’t be necessary for subsequent cartridge Because of the Gel printer’s print speed, Results From The Road replacements. The higher GX5050N num- only very-fast-drying sublimation release After about four months of installing bers are due to extra ink channels for papers should be used. The DyeTrans SPP and supporting the GX7000 and the magenta and yellow. paper has proven to be an excellent choice GX5050N printers, the results are nothing for the Gel technology. Other popular papers short of amazing. Chart #2: Percentage Of Cartridge Ink such as TexPrintXP have issues with high My staff and I have installed almost Used To Charge The Ink Lines saturation images and should be used with all the GX7000 and GX5050N printers caution. for sublimation and have encountered few Cyan Magenta Yellow Black issues. We have developed a precise instal- Fuel Economy lation methodology to insure success. See GX7000 18% 18% 18% 16% How does Gel ink usage compare our videos and PDFs. Please follow our to Epson sublimation inks? After much instructions! GX5050N 20% 34% 34% 18% testing, the results are nothing short of earth shaking. Every ml of SubliJet-R David Gross is sublimation ink translates to three ml of president of Condé Clogging sublimation ink for the Epson’s. Systems Inc., of The first question I get about the GX My standardized test image uses about Mobile, Ala. He can series printers is, “Do they clog as often .77 ml on an Epson desktop printer and be reached by email at as my Epson printer?” My experience is about .24 ml on a Gel printer. This puts the [email protected]. that they are much more robust printers cost of printing that letter-size test image and have far fewer clogging issues. This is at $.44 compared to $.91 for the Epson due to several factors: the pump that pulls 1400. This means that even though the cost the ink to the printhead has more pressure per ml of the Gel inks is about $1.83 per

Reprinted from THE SUBLIMATION ALMANAC 2009