The Kodak 4742 and 4760 the OEM versions of Mutoh

Kodak, Agfa, Accuplot, SignWarehouse and several other companies re-brand the Mutoh printer. This is because Mutoh is the manufacturing company which makes the Epson 7000 and Epson 9000. Thus all Mutoh printers are simply a different size and shape version of those Epson printer. All Mutoh, Mimaki, and Roland printers use piezo-electric printheads manufactured by Epson. Mutoh printers are relabeled and sold rebranded as Kodak 4742, Kodak 4760 and by other companies such as Agfa.

What is the difference? Really the only major difference is the software RIP. The media is all more or less the same (relabeled and rebranded from the few companies that actually make their own paper). The ink is more or less all from just two or three chemical companies (HP excellent inks are reported to come from Dupont, for example). Kodak, however, does have several unique kinds of media that it's own labs have developed. Kodak EI is one of these highly regarded media.

Thus if you want a Mutoh for doing fine art giclee prints, you are better off getting that from a
Mimaki dealer that we know in person, you might wish to contact Scarab Graphics: tel (800) 350-1366, fax (805) 684-7090, e-mail ken@scarabgraphics.com , since their Mutoh comes with a RIP, media, inks, and training to prepare you for doing fine art prints.

It has been very confusing of us to keep track of what Kodak model number is which. It was even unclear which was a rebranded Encad model number, and which was a rebranded Mutoh.

We briefly cover the other Kodak large format printers, Kodak 2042, 2060, 3038, 3043 (OEM of Encad) on a separate page.

Kodak does not yet seem to have a solution for fine art giclee printing. Too bad, since Kodak is now the distributor for BetterLight scan backs, the ideal way to scan your paintings or other artwork. If you intend to reproduce paintings on inkjet canvas you can't scan your paintings on a flatbed (this equipment is too small). But if you get an overhead scanner (with a scan back) then you can handle digitizing objects of any size or shape. The recommended equipment is covered in the FLAAR report on scanners.

Also lacking is an entry-level Kodak printer. Here Epson does the best job of providing what the newbie and first-time user need, even better than Hewlett-Packard. HP has perfected the market for printers in corporate situations, and desktop printers for home use to some degree. But Kodak has no entries in the home and pro-sumer inkjet market.

So far it is unclear whether Kodak will rebrand the new generation of Mutoh printers, the Mutoh Falcon II. So far Agfa is the main company which has taken on this new Mutoh printer family.

To help you out we have prepared a series of reports that you can obtain at no-cost via e-mail.