Issue #0609/1 - Hewlett-Packard specifically addresses the professional photography market with a printer designed to give the best to the best.
Bridging the gap between the Photosmart series of home and photo-enthusiast photo printers and the DesignJet graphics printers, the Photosmart Pro B9180 is a new category for Hewlett-Packard, utilising its new Scalable Printing Technology (SPT).
Targeted at professional photographers, the B9180 is an A3+ device designed for printing the highest quality photographs for exhibition and for sale.
Launched in tandem with the Photosmart Express retail kiosk (see TCPglobal Issue 0607 - "Retail photo printing kiosk from Hewlett-Packard – Photosmart Express Station") towards the end of February, we can now see just how versatile and flexible SPT is. It was first introduced with the Photosmart 3310 AiO, 3210 AiO and Photosmart 8250 6-ink machines last Autumn with the promise that we would see more printers covering a variety of categories in due course.
SPT is the key element to this new printer that makes it faster, more sophisticated and able to present its owner with higher quality output.
Manufactured by a photolithographic process, rather than welding together individual elements after manufacture, the printhead is an integrated unit, thus eliminating manufacturing alignment problems. It also means that nozzle spacing and accuracy are more controllable. This is essentially where the ‘scalable’ element is relevant, with the potential for manufacturing printheads of varying sizes easily – and much bigger.
Hewlett-PackardPhotosmart Pro B9180
This allows a 4×6 (10×15) borderless photo to print in as little as 10 seconds (draft mode). In high quality print mode (the mode the printer is designed for!), a print should be ready in 90 seconds. While not as fast as some of the A4 Photosmart printers, we have to remember that the Pro B9180 handles A3 format and, in order to obtain the highest print quality on a large format, the printhead carriage speed will have been slowed down. Nonetheless, this is a reasonably fast printer – with a 28ppm maximum mono print speed.
Driving the 8-ink Photosmart Pro B9180 is not a set of eight printheads, nor a single 8-ink printhead but a set of four printheads, each bringing two colours to the page. Alongside the traditional Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Photo-Cyan and Photo-Magenta are Photo-Black, Matt-Black and Grey.
However, although the printer holds eight inks at once, only seven would actually be used at any one time. If the user prints standard office style documents, the machine will use the standard four inks but when colour photographs are printed on high gloss paper, the machine will select the five colour inks plus the Photo-Black and Photo-Grey (7-ink).
For black and white printing, the user has some choices. The Matt-Black ink is for use on Hewlett-Packard’s range of fine art papers but on glossy papers both Black inks will be used, accompanied by the Grey, to ensure smooth tonal gradations and maximum density in the blacks. Hewlett-Packard claims to be able to produce deeper blacks than its competitors.
Hewlett-PackardPhotosmart Pro B9180
Secondly, Hewlett-Packard has applied its off-axis ink system, drawn primarily from its DesignJet and Business inkjet series, but perfectly suited to the SPT architecture, to the B9180. This allows larger ink reservoirs to be used – 27ml per colour instead of the 14-21ml per cartridge found in typical on-axis systems. This provides a total ink capacity (8 inks) of 216ml on the B9180 in comparison to 42ml on printers like the Photosmart 8450 or 51ml on the previous generation Photosmart 7960.
For an A3 printer, a high ink capacity is essential because an A3 photograph uses a lot of ink. Users can expect to spend as much as £4 just on ink for an 8-ink A3 photo (grossed up from the cost of printing 4×6/10×15 prints on Photosmart 7960) – glossy photo paper costs extra!
Hewlett-Packard claims a figure of around 80 A3 colour photos (840 at 4×6/10×15) per set of ink cartridges for the B9180. However, the big bonus for users is that any tank can be changed at any time, meaning that photographs with a dominant colour are printed as economically as photographs with a reasonably consistent colour balance – which means very much more economically than photographs with a dominant colour on a tricolour cartridge system.
Thirdly, Hewlett-Packard has redesigned its ink supply mechanism for off-axis ink systems.
With the SPT models, ink is fed to the printhead(s) via a set of tubes that pass through a pump. Also in the system is a set of vent chambers that allows air to be separated from contaminated ink and for that ink to be collected for future use. This is a critical element in the system because air can enter an inkjet system when changing ink tanks and the process of pumping ink in an off-axis system can result in a froth developing in the ink within the system. In addition, inkjet printheads are susceptible to small amounts of air entering the system during extended periods of inactivity. Most inkjet systems remove the air bubbles and purge the contaminated ink by ejecting it through the nozzles – meaning wasted ink.
Not so the SPT ink system! By sucking both ink and air bubbles from the printhead back through the vent chambers, and refilling the printhead with fresh ink, Hewlett-Packard is able to maintain the printhead without the wasteful priming and ink purging processes.
Although SPT does not have its ink tanks on the printhead, Hewlett-Packard is using the well-tried technique of placing an ink reservoir on the print head. This means that there is always a supply of ink ready at the head and, because this reservoir is never allowed to run dry, the head is always primed and ready.
New drop-counting technology (Electrostatic Drop Detection) has been developed for the B9180. In principle, drop-counting is linked to the onboard reservoirs, ensuring that the printer knows whether there is enough ink readily available to complete the job in hand. Hence the situation is avoided where several £/€/$s-worth of ink and paper are wasted due to one colour running dry part way through the print (how many times have you spotted that one of your photos has developing ink-starved striping half way through printing?).
If there is not enough ink available in the printhead reservoir to complete the job, the system enters its ‘recharge’ cycle – if any ink tank is empty as well, then the system will also ask for a new tank.
During the recharge cycle, ink is sucked out of the reservoir and is pumped back into the ink tanks. Then, fresh ink is pumped into the reservoir, ensuring that all colours are filled to the same level. Any excess ink and unwanted air is then sucked back out of the reservoir, through the vent chambers where the air is removed so that the ink can be reused.
As mentioned, this recharge cycle will activate when the drop counter indicates an ink-low status at the reservoir. In practice this means that it is activated between major print jobs and experience on the A4 models shows that it will certainly be activated after printing every full-page A4 photograph.
As the recharge cycle takes about 30 seconds, the process does have a negative effect on perceived print speed because, although the printer itself is fast, there is a delay between completing one A4 photograph and starting the next.
However, this new Electrostatic Drop Detection system takes the B9180 into an area previously reserved for the Large Format DesignJet printers. It is also used for managing the quality of the print. If a nozzle fails, the system is able to compensate by commanding another nozzle to take its place and to fire ink into the space left open by the failed nozzle. Only a catastrophic head failure or cumulative nozzle failure, to the point where the system can no longer fill the gaps, will cause the printer to give the user a ‘printhead failure’ message.
No.70 printheadIn this way, printhead life is maximised (reducing the cost to the user) and ink wastage (through failed prints) is minimised.
Hewlett-Packard claims that Scalable Printing Technology will bringer lower costs to inkjet printing. We have yet to see that as a reality. While it is just possible to see a small cost benefit with the No.363 ink tanks, used in the A4 models, over the comparative No.33X/34X cartridge series, it is still early days for SPT and visible user-oriented costs may fall in the longer term.
Having said that, comparing two A4 All-in-One machines from Hewlett-Packard indicates that it is in the ink cartridge manufacturing process that any major cost benefits of SPT are to be found. And, that these cost benefits are not yet being passed on.
No.344 CartridgeCost Per Page on the No.363 series is a nominal 2.23 pence for black printing and 6.85 pence for 4-ink printing. Compare that with the same black CPP when using the No.339 Black cartridge and a slightly higher 6.96 pence for colour printing with the No.339 Black and No.344 Tri-Colour cartridges, and we see the user paying a only small premium for the integrated printhead in the No.339/344 cartridges.
Turning this around, the SPT machine features a printhead that is designed for the life of the printer. Therefore, the user is paying only for ink when buying replacement ink tanks and not for the technology that is built into the traditional Tri-Colour cartridge. Unless the SPT printhead is many times more expensive to manufacture than the printheads in the integrated cartridges, the inks on their own should be significantly less expensive than the integrated cartridges.
However, we see that they are not. Even though Hewlett-Packard has indicated that SPT represents a cost reduction for the user, the company is fixing the pricing for inks so that the user is paying just 1.6% less for pages from the SPT machine. For an SPT printer costing the same to buy as a non-SPT printer, the SPT advantage would be only 1.1% per page over a three-year period of ownership.
We are not actually seeing any advantage in the purchase price of an SPT-based printer either. For instance, the Photosmart 3210 AiO, printing at up to 32ppm in black and capable of producing a 10×15 photo in 14 seconds actually costs 53% more to buy than the (non-SPT) Photosmart 2575 AiO that prints at up to 30ppm in black with a 10×15 photo appearing in 27 seconds. This makes a long-term CPP that is 10% higher than the 2575 AiO.
Clearly, there is benefit in the latest generation technology but this is a hefty premium to pay for the latest technology in a machine that is virtually identical in terms of operational features. Both are Print/Scan/Copy devices; they have similar speeds; both have 6.4cm preview LCDs; both are rated for 3,000 pages per month; neither have duplex printing capability; and both have USB and wired Ethernet network interfaces (as does the B9180).
Development of the Scalable Printing Technology cost $1.4bn and Hewlett-Packard recognises that the hardware itself is more expensive to produce than hardware that utilises integrated cartridges (less technology in the hardware). Hence, the manufacturer has to do a balancing act to ensure that adequate returns are achieved from ink sales to cover the technology investment in developing the ink and delivery system. Therefore, ink on its own is no less expensive to buy than ink in an integrated cartridge!
Part of its low-cost claim is that printing with the B9180 will be 30% less expensive than a colour laser printer but, as there is insufficient pricing information available for a full comparison to be made for the B9180 at this point, we cannot be sure. The machine itself will sell for £499/€699 – so this is very definitely a high-end, professional device – and it is expected to be available during June.
However, with A3 laser printers costing around £2,500 upwards to buy, the comparison should not be one of cost but of desired print quality and print volume. For the high print volumes expected of an A3 colour laser printer, we would expect the Total Cost of Printing to be significantly lower than the Cost of Printing associated with a low volume inkjet printer. So, be careful when considering such a comparison.
At first glance one might imagine that the presence of a 2-line text LCD display and lack of a colour preview monitor is a problem on a printer in this class. However, this just helps to emphasise that the B9180 is not a standalone snap-shot machine but a full-blown professional darkroom device. As such it has no need for a preview screen as digital originals will have been processed in a software application such as PhotoShop.
As a professional photographer’s printer, one of the really useful features, a very rare feature and certainly a first in Hewlett-Packard’s modern range of inkjets, is a straight through paper path so that the machine can handle rigid material.
Also essential for graphic designers and photographers is ICC colour profiling. The B9180 has closed loop colour calibration to ensure consistency and accuracy of colour reproduction.
Hewlett-Packard has also taken a leap forwards in terms of photo permanence. The latest range of inks and materials is capable of surviving for 200 years before degradation occurs. Hewlett-Packard claims this is the best permanence in the 130-year history of colour photography – 5x Fujicolour Crystal Archive prints and 10x Kodak Edge Generations and Royal Generations silver halide prints.
So, with inkjet printers spanning high-end retail through 8-ink professional photographer’s machine to general purpose photo All-in-One, we are now missing only a low-end 4-ink printer before we see the widest range of capabilities emerging from SPT technology.
These four categories will certainly not be the end of the story however. The technology is sure also to be introduced into 4-colour business inkjet machines; general purpose printers and AiOs; and DesignJet configurations in due course. Clearly the technology has the potential to drive every inkjet machine in the Hewlett-Packard portfolio, regardless of size and target market, and we could even see it taking the company into new areas, such as high-productivity office and light-production systems (as opposed to the Indigo liquid laser system) with full-page array printheads to attack more of the Xerox market.
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