Crystal Gazing

Written by Greg Corke

Published Tue 15 Jul 2008

The technical wide format printing market is served by two core technologies, inkjet and LED, and this has been the case for a number of years now. Inkjet squirts ultra-fine droplets of ink onto special coated paper while LED fuses powder toner onto standard plain paper to deliver monochrome prints.

Both technologies have their strengths and weaknesses. Colour inkjet is great for producing photo quality architectural renderings and line drawings of great clarity. However, it’s a relatively slow technology so is not ideally suited to a production environment. It also requires special coated paper for best results.

LED, on the other hand, delivers incredibly sharp prints on plain paper. It is also extremely quick with some machines churning out over ten A0s per minute. The downside is that it does this in monochrome only, which limits its effectiveness in communicating designs.

The upshot of this means that architects and engineers continually make tradeoffs when it comes to printing: choose inkjet and sacrifice speed for top notch colour prints or adopt LED for high throughput but only in monochrome. And while larger firms undoubtedly mix and match the two technologies, how many small architectural/engineering companies can justify investing in two large format printers?

This is the backdrop to which Océ has just launched a brand new print technology for wide format printing, called CrystalPoint. According to Océ, it combines the best of both toner and inkjet printing, by using solid colour TonerPearls made out of resin, instead of ink or powder-based toner. Each TonerPearl is about the size of a small marble and is delivered to the imaging device by rolling down a delivery chute. When each TonerPearl reaches the imaging device it is heated and turns into a toner gel which is then jetted onto plain (or even recycled) paper in tiny droplets much like an inkjet. However, unlike standard inkjet ink, Océ’s TonerPearls include a special agent, which crystalises once it has adhered itself to the media. The result is an instant dry print with a stronger bond and a semi gloss silk finish. Prints are also waterfast, which makes them ideal for use on site.

Océ ColorWave 600

Océ has brought this technology to market in the ColorWave 600, a 42-inch (A0+) capable wide format printer with a price tag from £30,000. It delivers a single colour linework A0 drawing in a breathtaking 31 seconds, which is about twice as fast as a top-end inkjet, though Océ says it really comes into its own in terms of throughput when delivering full colour prints.

The ColorWave 600 has capacity for six media rolls, each containing up to 200 metres of plain paper and together with four 500g TonerPearl cartridges (CMYK) and a top delivery tray for 100 prints, that’s a lot of unattended printing. An optional folder and stacker builds on this solid foundation.

In terms of Job delivery, Océ’s new Print Assistant software helps choose the correct print mode for the job at hand: draft, production, or presentation. This is particularly useful for maximising throughput, as most users opt for ‘best quality’ regardless and there is virtually nothing to distinguish between linework prints in draft and presentation mode.

Print quality

With a technology designed to bridge the gap between inkjet and LED, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d get the best of both worlds – with no tradeoff whatsoever. However, the fact is that the print quality of the ColorWave 600 fell a little short of our expectations. That’s not to say it’s bad; far from it. Indeed, linework is excellent with crisp lines and good colourfill, but for photographs and renderings, definition was a little disappointing and colours lacked vibrancy. However, with the stunning photographic results available with inkjet on glossy paper, there is a lot to live up to.

Conclusion

Océ’s CrystalPoint technology offers the AEC industry an exciting new proposition for wide format printing. It gives architects and engineers the opportunity to print all of their wide format documents in colour, whether that’s line drawings, photos/renderings or a combination of the two. After all, AutoCAD uses coloured layers to great effect to improve drawing clarity, so why shouldn’t all prints be in colour?

As with most new technologies, the downside is the price. With a price from £30,000 some firms may find the ColorWave 600 out of reach and, office space permitting, continue to invest in a dual print LED and inkjet solution.

But this would still be a compromise and if you’re looking for a production level printing solution which has the potential to revolutionise wide format printing, then Océ’s CrystalPoint technology definitely warrants a closer look. And it will certainly be very interesting to see where Océ takes this technology in the next few years.

www.oce.com