25 Jul
2006
25 Jul
'06
11:23 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
On 7/26/06, Don Y <dgy at dakotacom.net> wrote:
The paper and film must be in contact as they pass over
the head UNDER PRESSURE (to fuse the wax into the paper).
You would need a mechanism that allowed the two surfaces
to be decoupled -- yet not experience any slippage
(i.e. so the image that you print at position X on the
page actually happens at position X regardless of how/if
the film was disengaged prior to that point).
You *might* be able to process black separately (for monochrome
prints) but that would increase the size of the mechanism.
One could ague that if you want to print monochrome, print
on a different printer! :>
(BTW, one big advantage of thermal dye transfer is the
degree of saturation of the colors. Black *is* black)
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Certainly that's the easy way to do it... one could design a mechanism
that only advanced the color transfer films if they were printed to,
or to only advance them if, say, _any_ content was being printed (to
skip swaths of white), but that makes things more complicated and
certainly slower. It was an expensive printer (I was told it used
about $2 in consumables
per printed page) - it had three rolls of dye that spooled by no matter
what was being printed. Each spool did exactly so many pages then
ran out, even if you printed one pixel on a page. The advantage, I
guess, is a simplified mechanism and consistent printing.
You can't really "conserve" film based on the image
*content*. Usually, the film rides atop the paper
as it passes through the marking engine. It's not
like you can STOP the film's progress while the paper
continues along.