HP Scitex FB6100 Printing Technologies - Page 3

the ink. This can clog ink supply tubes and the microscopic ink passages inside printheads leading to printer failure and the expense of downtime and replacing parts. Inks touch plastic, metal, adhesive, and elastic materials that are used in the ink delivery system, printheads, and printhead service stations. Every component of the ink and printer materials coming into contact with ink must be selected and designed to work together. Adverse ink-material reactions can cause corrosion of metal parts and can soften or dissolve plastics, adhesives, and elastomers. Contamination by residues from these reactions may require early printhead replacement to maintain printer performance and output quality. During the development of HP commercial and industrial printing solutions, HP engineers perform extensive material compatibility and performance testing with Original HP inks under standby, normal, and extreme operational conditions over a range of temperature and humidity. Test procedures are based on HP's proprietary knowledge of what's in the ink, what's in the printer, and specific performance requirements for each component of the printing system. Some issues may appear early in these tests, but others may appear only after months of storage and operation and under special circumstances. If a problem is found during product development, changing either a printer component or the inks or both requires new qualification tests. HP's commitment to providing reliable commercial and industrial printing solutions involves a significant investment in experienced test and development engineers, test equipment and facilities, and time. HP's product development process characterizes and optimizes printers, ink, and large-format printing materials as a system. HP conducts comprehensive print quality testing over a range of environmental conditions. Print durability and display permanence are evaluated according to HP, ISO, ASTM, and Wilhelm Imaging Research protocols. Working together, Original HP inks and HP large-format printing materials deliver dependable print quality, color accuracy, durability, and display permanence meeting customers' expectations without costly trial-and-error. Third-party ink suppliers generally do not have access to the material specifications and performance requirements for all parts of an HP printing system that are affected by the ink. Without HP's proprietary system knowledge and resources, performance qualification cannot be as thorough and complete as with an HP-branded solution. While third-party inks may promise lower cost per liter of ink, ink represents only a fraction of the total cost of print production. Users should assess all the costs involved and understand how their profit can be reduced by lower productivity, printer downtime and repairs, and waste from print optimization by trial and error. The dependability of a printing solution developed, tested, and backed by HP should be an important consideration in the selection of inks and large-format printing materials. Durability and Display Permanence Durability and display permanence are key attributes for prints displayed both indoors and outdoors. Durability generally relates to how well the colorant binds to the print medium and the resistance of the print medium to deterioration under conditions of use. Colorant durability can be characterized by the resistance of a printed image to water and to rubbing, abrasion, and smearing when the print is cleaned with wipes and common chemicals (especially important for vehicle graphics). Durability also considers resistance of the image to cracking as the print is bent, folded, or stretched. When durability alone is specified, degradation of a print's optical and mechanical properties may be considered together under conditions specified by standards such as ASTM D2565-99. Display permanence, sometimes called fade resistance or lightfastness, characterizes the change in color and optical density of the image under exposure to light, particularly sunlight and sources of ultraviolet (UV) light. Display permanence measures the time required for colors to change by a specified amount under standardized conditions such as display in-window, outdoors, "indoors behind glass away from direct sunlight", etc. These are reference conditions used for comparative purposes between ink technologies and between specific inks on specific media within a technology. Display permanence is often specified with and without lamination for prints displayed in direct sunlight inwindow or outdoors. 3