For most people, the main characteristic of a drawing or diagram is accuracy. However, the specialists of companies for which such documents are the result of work can tell you about a dozen, if not more, important factors, without which it is simply not worth getting down to business. For a large organization such as the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan of the city of Moscow, bringing the project to the stage of printing turns into a non-trivial task, sometimes hundreds of people are working on the solution. However, this does not mean that a project ready for final transfer to paper can be considered complete.
General plan for buying a printer
About a year and a half ago, the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan thought about buying a new large-format printer for printing design documentation. Basically, the projects of the institute are related to the planning of urban development areas, the arrangement of territories and cartography. Igor Borisovich Ositsimsky, the head of the group for preparing and issuing design documentation of the institute, spoke about the problems that the new technology had to solve. Igor Ositsimsky, of course, had professional printing equipment at his disposal, but over time its characteristics ceased to meet the growing requirements. First, it was necessary to improve the print quality. Secondly, the institute needed great productivity, since the program for the release of projects and various urban planning documents was great at that time. The third and fourth points are closely related to the second point: the need for greater reliability with an increased load, and besides, there is no inconvenience with frequent media changes with an endless stream of tasks (I had to be distracted to change the media every two to three hours). The Océ ColorWave 600 large format color printer helped solve these and some other problems.
CrystalPoint - the crystal-clear solution
The Océ ColorWave 600 is a professional printer that, thanks to proprietary CrystalPoint technology, provides print speeds of up to two A0-size pages per minute, without making any concessions to print quality. Since it was preceded by an ink jet printer at the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan, it is easy to understand that the increase in productivity turned out to be very significant. An inkjet printer, perhaps, gives more vivid colors in photographs, but for a design institute this kind of printing cannot be called profile. Igor Ositsimsky says: “It was important for us that the printer we bought could draw details well, including the thinnest lines. We were not always delighted with the quality of elaboration of such details with our old inkjet printer. And the Océ ColorWave 600 does it all well.”
The peculiarity of the CrystalPoint technology is that the developers from the Océ company have found the opportunity to combine the advantages of electrographic and inkjet printing in one device. All four ColorWave 600 color cartridges are filled with solid toner in the form of many small balls (TonerPearls), which one by one enter the print head (imaging device). At this stage, CrystalPoint technology is close to electrography, where printing is carried out with toner in a solid powder state. However, unlike conventional toner for a laser or LED printer, Océ solid toner does not come in the form of small particles at any stage of operation, which pollute the air and negatively affect human health. In the ColorWave 600 printhead, the toner ball heats up a little, which makes it look like a gel, that is, a viscous liquid. Through the nozzles, the gel enters the substrate, which makes the ColorWave 600 similar to inkjet printers, but the drops of the gel, unlike ink, do not absorb and do not spread, but instantly solidify, just like melted toner hardens during electrographic printing. That is why (when printing with virtually liquid toner!) CrystalPoint technology is characterized by the precision of fine detail that is inherent in electrography. At the same time, the use of printheads also provides better positioning of each point of the image compared to electrography.
At the mention of printheads, connoisseurs can immediately ask a reasonable question about their reliability, because, as you know, in inkjet printers, this element is one of the most expensive consumables. Here is what Igor Ositsimsky says about it: “By choosing the ColorWave 600, we were able to avoid frequent repairs and replacement of parts, primarily printheads. Each print head is rated for 25 km, and the annual printer load is 50 km. It's gorgeous. During the year of operation, repairs were not required even once. In addition, the Océ ColorWave 600 printhead is not consumable at all.
However, inkjet printers have one plus that cannot be taken away: they do not need time to warm up. In this respect, the ColorWave 600 occupies an intermediate position between inkjet and electrographic devices. “However, - Igor Ositsimsky clarifies, - if tasks, as we often have, come in a stream, the duration of the warm-up does not really matter. Incidentally, the wider the job flow, the lower the cost of printing on the ColorWave 600."
The cost of printing is an interesting topic indeed. Igor Ositsimsky himself believes that the cartridges for the Océ ColorWave 600 are expensive, but it is also impossible to consider the price of the cartridges alone. “The cost of paper for the ColorWave 600 is several times lower than for competing machines,” he explains. “Here, a roll of 175 meters is comparable in price to a roll of 50 meters for a thermal inkjet printer. The difference is three and a half times!"
Time also has a cost - in particular, this is also why the need to change the medium every two to three hours was so inopportune. The ColorWave 600 made it possible to charge six rolls of 175 meters at once, and then forget about the necessary, but such an annoying replacement procedure for a long time - especially if the deadline is tight and the price of time increases. Unlike inkjet machines, the ColorWave 600 is unpretentious to the media, works well with recycled paper, and when loading rolls with different types of media, it switches between them automatically. Easy setup is another trump card of the ColorWave 600, freeing you from the hassle of cumbersome printing profiles. Drivers for any operating system have been developed for the ColorWave 600, and the supplied software kit greatly facilitates the work of various graphics programs.
We hold the blow
I must admit that the story told is not as cloudless as it seems. At the very beginning, the Océ ColorWave 600, which had not yet been installed at the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan, was damaged during careless transportation, simply being dropped. However, the subsequent examination revealed, fortunately, only a malfunction of a pair of sensors - they were replaced right at the workplace. So the ColorWave 600 in Igor Ositsimsky's office works without breakdowns even after such a noticeable shake-up.
It is not out of place to say about the fate of the prints that leave the printer. Of course, they can be used right away as the toner solidifies instantly without requiring any drying. Even when choosing a printer, Igor Ositsimsky noted that ink is not washed off from prints made on the ColorWave 600. When a project is handed over at an institute, it is hung out on depofits, which are sometimes carried along the street and undergo a lot of touches. Keeping prints in working form becomes an important task for the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan: no one wants everything printed to flow suddenly at the most inopportune moment.“On the whole, we at the institute are very satisfied with the apparatus (we have two of them in the General Plan),” says Igor Ositsimsky. - And we will definitely follow the development of the ColorWave lineup. Océ, by the way, produces sets of equipment that allow both duplicating the original and stitching prints, and therefore the possession of such a complex may become one of our priorities in the future."
Currently, the Océ ColorWave 600 printer, located near Igor Ositsimsky's workplace, has about thirty A0 drawings every day, which means a relatively quiet period. A good load on this device is one hundred such prints every day. Under such a regime, the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan of the city of Moscow bought a ColorWave 600, and it is gratifying that the printer copes with this load.
