SEDO Sales Director Andrew McGuinness weighs up the evidence for and against the current trend of adding extra ink channels to solvent printers
For a while now we’ve been seeing a move towards the production of solvent printers with ink channels in excess of CMYK, even at entry level. But do you really need them? In this post, I’m taking a look at how this change came about, what purpose extra channels serve and whether they’re something you should consider in your next purchase or upgrade decision.
The story so far
The advent of extra ink channels first started in water-based (aqueous) printers to improve the production quality for photographic and fine artwork repro. Manufacturers introduced new colours to fill gaps in the colour gamut – typically adding orange and green to the traditional CMYK quartet. The next development was to add additional black channels for matt or gloss effects, or to provide extra grey to improve gradients and finishes on certain types of media. An early adopter was the Epson T series, where the inclusion of more colours allowed for a higher percentage Pantone match. For example, the 9000 with green and orange can achieve a 95-98 percent match.
What’s new is the arrival of extra ink channels in solvent and eco-solvent printers. And with them come a couple of questions:
How extra print nozzles contribute to print quality
Hitting a high percentage on your Pantone match has become the holy grail of printing. Digital colour printers tend to have a large gamut – that is the entire range of colours that a device can print – the efficacy of which is measured by the percentage match it can achieve for Pantone colours. Generally, digital printing using CMYK inks can produce almost any colour.
So why bother with extra nozzles? The problem arises when it’s important to have an exact match for a given colour, rather than a close proximation to that colour. For example, if you need to match a brand colour precisely or for fine art printing. Extending the gamut with the addition of extra colours such as green, orange or violet can significantly improve a printer’s ability to match Pantone colours exactly, from around 50 to 60 percent up to 80 percent. This means more accurate colours and fewer reproduction errors.
But are the extra nozzles worth the extra expense?
Using printers with extra nozzles undeniably costs more – first in the capital cost of the printer and then for the extra ink required on an ongoing basis. So do you really need them?
We stock Mutoh printers for a number of reasons, one of which is that out of the range of comparable printers, they achieve the highest percentage Pantone matching. The Mutoh 1624X running with the company’s UMS inks hits 83 percent, compared with about 60-75 percent in the rest of the field. The UMS – Universal Mild Solvent – inks use innovative ink chemistry involving nano-size highly durable colour pigments with a new blend of milder solvents and multi-resin mix, making them suitable for high-quality, high-speed printing. Mutoh’s Intelligent Interweaving technology for laying down ink further increases colour accuracy.
Making the right decision
At the end of the day, it depends on what level of quality you want to achieve. But we believe the only time you really need extra ink channels is for white and silver for over or under printing or special effects. Dealing with printers that run on eight or ten ink colours is significantly more hassle than just using CMYK, and certainly more costly.
You need to ask yourself how much of your work is photographic or luxury printing and how much is signage? Have your clients ever complained about the colour quality before? Furthermore, there are other, simpler measures you can take to improve print quality. Think about switching from generic to higher quality media, such as Metamark MD5. Or consider whether you could be profiling better in the RIP – Caldera has some additional RIP features that can help you hit colours more effectively.
However, if most of your output is for luxury brands or fine art portfolios, you might find it worth your while to upgrade to a printer that uses additional colours. The Epson SC 80600 offers additional colour nozzles and will produce really high end results. But for most of our clients, improving your profiling with a better RIP, which we can help you with, is a perfectly adequate way of increasing you percentage Pantone hit.
For guidance on RIP profiling or to see a Mutoh demo, give us a call on 01268 724570 or fill in the enquiry form on the website.