LUCIA PRO ink enhances dark area reproduction along with colour performance and reduces graininess
High volume, high standard
Canon has been at the forefront of the production of high quality printers for many years now. The scope of printers it produces covers a vast area of production with many interlinking software and hardware solutions.
Images seen by photographers produced in high quality digital formats are worthless unless that moment captured in time can be reproduced time and time again. Capturing the image is one thing, having the wider world see them, sometimes ten-times or even 100-times bigger than the original, needs a special type of technology.
Capturing the image is one thing, having the wider world see them, sometimes ten-times or even 100-times bigger than the original, needs a special type of technology”
Singling out one of the options Canon offers for this task, the imagePROGRAF PRO-4000S with added key Canon technologies, it is clear from looking under the covers that this printer can deliver those images in detailed colour.
The imagePROGRAF PRO-4000S is a 44" or 1118mm-wide inkjet printer which has at its core a 1.28" inkjet head with 18,432 nozzles with Canon’s FINE technology deploying eight colours in total.
FINE is the acronym for Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering which is a product driving many Canon inkjet printers. The company developed a process of semi-conductor production using photolithography and it is this that Canon believes gives it the edge at producing print heads in its six areas of print quality. The manufacturer now has patents in numerous countries producing this form of production and over the years it has proven to be both successful and productive across a number of markets.
The head can deploy up to eight colours with a minimum ink droplet size of four pico-litres. The four key colours, (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) are set out across two of three groups of channels symmetrically in the print head so there is a pair of those colours on the extremities of the head.
Inside those eight channels of four colours are the remaining colours of photo black, cyan and magenta, and grey. This layout of channels means the ink deployment produces stunning print depth and a very wide colour gamut but also ensures that very high print speeds can be attained. These speeds are double that of the imagePROGRAF 8-colour series printers.
Add to this the FINE technology Canon has designed which helps stop clogging wherever possible. Each nozzle is monitored to ensure that if one becomes blocked, another can step in and take over ensuring that the printed output looks the same.
Finally with the inkjet head, the control of the commands to deploy ink in volume is achieved by using a powerful image processor called the L-COA PRO. The state-of-the-art processor can absorb all the information required for these high definition images and cascade it waterfall-style where needed for faster and faster production.
Rich colour expression
The layout of the heads are only part of the colour picture, obviously without well pigmented and durable inks, the print head itself would be of little use. To fully utilise the PF-10 inkjet head described above, Canon has the newly developed LUCIA PRO inks. These new inks use microencapsulated pigments to ensure what Canon describes as ‘rich colour expression’. LUCIA PRO ink also enhances dark area reproduction along with much better red colour performance and most of all can significantly reduce graininess.
The ink comes in either 106, 330 or 700ml containers which are all ‘hot swappable’ meaning production does not need to be interrupted to allow for depleted ink to be changed.
The inks themselves are not only controlled by volume and position, they are also calibrated with an inbuilt colour calibration system. There are multiple sensors within the printer that measures and checks the output from each nozzle and makes corrections on the fly so the last sheet looks identical to the first.
Recognising that a user of the imagePROGRAF-4000S may well have a number of these machines or its big brother the 6000S, Canon can configure the colour calibration device to ensure any group of printers are all printing the same image quality and matching with a single click of a button.
Substrate control
As with any device like this, you can be forgiven for ignoring the second very important half of the machine – the substrate control systems. As previously mentioned, the ability to control ink deployment to such small amounts is worthless unless you can control the substrate it is placed on.
Firstly, the structure of the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4000S has what is known as a ‘unibody’ design. The idea here is to ensure that the machine’s construction is such that there is no movement at all from within the device so the ink droplet can be presented to the substrate in the very same place, time after time.
The speed of the inkjet head itself can carry with it some significant inertia and with the head moving from side to side, breaking and accelerating rapidly from a standing start, arresting any undesired movement is very important.
Canon has not only invested time and energy to ensure the printer works well, it has been ergonomically designed to ensure it looks as good as it prints with a flat top allowing operators to monitor the printing and an easy to use 3.5" LCD touch panel.
The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4000S has a number of different options for substrate feeding and delivery.
Firstly with regard to roll configuration, the machine has a multifunction roll system to either allow for the selection of two rolls of substrate to be loaded to the machine, but if rerouted, the second roller cassette can be configured to rewind the printed sheet meaning a print length of up to 18 metres is possible.
The machine has a multifunction roll system allowing for two rolls of substrate to be loaded
The maximum media width is 1118mm or 44" and the imagePROGRAF PRO-4000S can handle media thickness up to 0.8mm. The maximum diameter of roll that can be loaded to the printer is 170mm which, depending on substrate thickness means printing can take place uninterrupted for some time.
Lastly, the machine does not stand alone as an entity; the device itself is supported by a wide range of Canon products to add to the reliability and productivity. The software is fully supported across a number of operating systems, most importantly Windows and Apple.
For either the fast and easy printing of deep colour prints direct from a USB or the production of a volume of posters that require identical reproduction at speed, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4000S can handle either or both with ease.
Brian Sims Principal Consultant, Metis Print Consultancy, www.metis-uk.eu
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