|
Bellise,
Bellise Plus, and other RasterGraphics piezo printers from
Gretag Imaging
GretagImaging
is the prestigious Swiss company which produces only industrial
strength equipment. Gretag owns Macbeth, Onyx
Graphics (PosterShop, the #1 selling RIP worldwide).
I
attended the Gretag press presentation at Photokina. I have
inspected Gretag printers at every trade show that I have
found them.
I
am disposed to Gretag, after all, the company is Swiss and
sells only to profitable commercial companies. No low end,
no iffy equipment anywhere. CymbolicSciences LightJet is another
Gretag family product; the LightJet is the Rolls Royce of
the photo printers, the unquestioned top photo printer in
the world.
Yet
so far I have not been able to get excited about either the
Bellise or Bellise Plus. The quality is certainly better than
the Gerber Orion (formerly the Arizona 30 from Gretag). That
is painfully slow and exhibited lots of banding defects when
I saw it at a recent SGIA 2000 sign trade show in New Orleans.
The Gerber
Orion has Xaar printheads and uses solvent inks, so on
3M
media you get some longevity without lamination.
The
Arizona also uses Xaar
printheads, and is actually the only Xaar printhead machine
that has passed my critical "eyeball appeal test."
My notes even say the output was "very very nice."
At another trade show more recently my notes also indicate:
"output looked nice." As the FLAAR reviews expand
into reviewing more of the printers used for outdoor signs
we will begin longer reviews later this year of the various
printers which ended up with the name Arizona.
Other
printers in the RasterGraphics family, the PiezoPrint 5000,
evidently used oil-based ink, sort of a kind of ink that requires
special media, is hard to laminate, and the oil inks never
really dry (quotes from a presentation by a specialist in
all this at The Big Picture Show, October, Palm Springs, California).
I
have included the various RasterGraphics printers in the FLAAR
report on outdoor production printers, highlighted in green
in the list of reports below. The advantage of these FLAAR
reports on large format printers is that each report is comparative:
all the pertinent printers are compared and contrasted. On
the web pages there is space only to just mention the basic
printers. The reports run about 4 to 6 pages in length. To
get this reports, you are requested to please fill out the
"provisional inquiry" form or otherwise express
what your background is, what you need to print, and enough
clarification from you so we know precisely what reports to
send back to you.
| |
|
|
|
|
| All
reports by Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth |
UPDATED:
July 06/2001
|
