Thermal inkjet or piezo inkjet for disks, which is better?

[The village idiot]

After doing some printing last night I am forming a conclusion:

Thermal inkjet printers may actually work better for printing onto IJP disks. I was printing with my Epson 640 last night, and not getting great results (mostly media but that's another story). So I tried one of the samples I still had. It did not print as well as its twin that was printed on my Lexmark. The only tested disk so far was a Ritek G03. Both looked good, but the Lexmark printing dried faster.

So here is the problem, Since I can't get a Canon disk printer here, can somoene that has both do a comparision test? My theory is that the heating in the ink allows it to adhere to the disk more quickly. The only other printers that might use thermal inkjet heads are some of the professional models that cost way too much money to try. A couple of you might have one of those as well as the Epson based pro printers. Anything that reports a higher resolution than 1440 is likely to be a NEW Epson, or a Lexmark cartridge.

[gmatov]

Village,

I think I might buy into that idea, except for the fact that I have a Canon S750, and an HP 812, and my problem is that it is the media, the photo papers. My Canon will not print to the HP paper. The ink pools into blobs, like you would get on a freshly waxed car, except, of course, way finer beading.

Same result with a bunch of other papers, mostly show stuff that I haven't bought in years, since, they didn't work then, why should I try them now?

I can print perfectly on Epson, Kodak, Canon, paper. Looks like a photo.

Same with Sam's Club's 100 and 150 packs, "Guaranteed to work with all Inkjet printers" stuff. Guarantee was good. They gave me my money back.

Different gel coats are designed for different qualities of solubility of the ink. Fast as the damn things print, today, they don't have long to, what, liquify, the gel and bond, and not, what, bleed into an area they're not supposed to? (What means what is the word I want to use, for a better word)

It is going to be tough to determione what is the best ink to use, as we haven't the foggiest idea whose paper coating tech they are using. Hell, maybe their own, no printer MFG involved.

Since we don't have 14 brands of printers that can print on disks, the only other alternative would be for those who have one to clean a cartridge thoroughly and refill with another kind of ink and test a disk, at least those that won't get too screwed up with another ink, like gelling and clogging you mentioned before.

Your own (it is yours, isn't it?) 35 buck mod might be the ideal, except that you would be out the expense of all the refill kits, if the carts can be cleaned thoroughly enough.

I thought at one time, when I bought that garbage paper, that paper is paper, Canon doesn't make paper, HP doesn't, Lexmark doesn't, etc., but they can sure as hell tell the papermills "We need you to coat your paper with this particular formulation for a gel coat. If you do, we will buy a million tons of it. If you don't, sayanara."

Mebbe this makes sense?

Cheers,

George

[NightWing]

It would be easer if instead of these little simple stupid drivers is to have an actual RIP engine with the abbility to adjust the setting including dot gain { amount of ink }. The problem is that all of the drivers are geared for a certain type of paper with ink and not really the hold material placed on the disk to print on. Same problem with printing on vinyl. Its not paper but some what act like it.

Have played with both small and large format printers ( 50 inch wide jobs ) using both technowledge. Like the Epson over the HP due to not being eated alive on pigmeted ink. It like sand blasting firing pigmented ink out. Esp when you are playing with a thousand dollar per head on a printer using 4 to 6 heads. You want some life from them! Also the thermal leave a ragged pattern.

You could try to lighten up the graphics a bit. Not the same really as dot gain but could help.

[The village idiot]

It would be easer if instead of these little simple stupid drivers is to have an actual RIP engine with the abbility to adjust the setting including dot gain { amount of ink }.

You got that right!!!!!!!! Would be no problem if you could use REAL CMYK printer settings with the disks. I guess that would give points to the Superimage modified Epson 1520 printer, then just go to Ebay and buy the cheapo Epson Stylus RIP for about $40USD. Make up a nice Transfer function in Photoshop and adjust the amount of ink, and may be medium to heavy GCR to help limit the amount of ink with the darker colors. But a 1520 is really more than I want from a CD printer. Maybe I'll try converting images to CMYK and playing with the CMYK settings to try to limit the ink. Kind of a lot more work, but that might be the best answer.

Would still like some other direct comparisons from those people using both the Epsons and the Canons. Maybe someone could go to a store and print a couple of disks on each? I'm in the USA, so I can't even look at the Canon disk printers, some kind of licensing problem from all the rumors around, same for the other printer manufacturers.

BTW, the heads in the big HP's are really $1000 each? Heads for my Epson 9500pro are only about $125 each, and only need 2 of them. I have 2 sitting on a shelf waiting until I need them.

[NightWing]

Actualy the heads in a Rolan Camjet { non hifi and are built in } are about 1000 a pice! Yipe! And it only did 360dpi but would print 49.75 inches wide by how ever long your roll of media was. Oh yea it could make stickers and cut them all out when done.

Hum. Been a bit. Also played around with a HP 2500 and cant remember the other HP. I think it was a 700 or something but both had disposable carts. Also played arouns with a Graphtech { YUCK }.

The problem is that everthing goes through the standard print engine/driver and kind of hard to kick it outside of its envelope. Its possible to "Direct Drive" with your own code. But a RIP is an expensive item due to the development cost etc. And that not adding in the external calibration box to get the media-ink just right. That use to be around 1200 just by itself. Its not fun to write a RIP. Worked on one and it drove me mad since its a multi dimentional style problem. Fun but a pain.

I am wondering if the drivers on the Epson paper/CD printers have been adjusted to cover the coating on a prinitable cd? Most Epson's understand ESC\2 code. So you could try the drivers for the 900 on another Epson.

If all else faled there is the new HP "fry both sides" tech and the Casio strip CD/DVD disk printer. Actualy saw the Casio in Staples the other day! But at 100 and only a small strip it can lay down better to go with a Epson disk printer.

Good luck on your hunt!