Digital Prints

6. Speed: How Long Does It Take to Print?
Newcomers to inkjet printing are, at first, enamored by the high-quality prints they can
produce. Speed is usually not a primary concern. However, after a few days of watching
that printhead going back and forth as the paper slowly emerges at what seems like the
rate of a glacial ice flow, speed starts to become more important. And, it’s especially crucial
if you’re hoping to achieve any sort of production output or run a business by outputting
prints for others. The phrase “time is money” is nowhere more appropriate than
here. That’s why plotter-type, wide-format inkjets usually advertise their speeds in squarefeet-per-hour
(sfph) or square-meter-per-hour (smph).
One of the selling points for the Epson Stylus Pro 4000 is that it’s almost twice as fast as
its older cousins (7600 and 9600) in the Epson Stylus Pro model line, and the 4000’s Dual
CMYK ink mode is 98-percent faster than the same printer’s Photographic ink mode. The
ENCAD 1000i prints at 220 sfph in High Speed mode down to 30 sfph in Ultrafine
mode, and it has a special heated nose and ambient airflow drying system. The ColorSpan
DisplayMaker X-12 is so fast (up to 400 square feet per hour) that it has a heated-forcedair
dryer to dry the ink. The HP Designjet 5500 even beats that with a top productionmode
speed of 569 square feet per hour and its own integrated heater.
Desktop inkjets, on the other hand, typically advertise their pages-per-minute (ppm) rate
or how many minutes it takes to print an 8 × 10-inch photo (or 4 × 6). In general, the
higher the quality of inkjet output, the slower the print speed. You can check this yourself
by simply changing the “quality” (or similar) mode setting on any inkjet printer and
timing the same test prints. These different quality modes become especially important
for the wide-formats, which often have to provide higher-speed, lower-quality production
output. The Roland Hi-Fi JET Pro II, for example, has 10 different speed/quality variations
for its six printheads (see Table 6.2).
Chapter 6 ■ Selecting an Inkjet Printer 195
Table 6.2 Print Modes, Resolution Settings, and Production Capacity for Roland Hi-Fi JET Pro II
Resolution Direction Passes Sq.Ft. per Hr.
450 × 360 dpi bi 2 300
450 × 360 dpi uni 2 159
360 × 720 dpi bi 4 150
360 × 720 dpi uni 4 75
720 × 720 dpi bi 8 75
720 × 720 dpi uni 8 37
720 × 1440 dpi bi 16 38
720 × 1440 dpi uni 16 19
1440 × 1440 dpi bi 32 18
1440 × 1440 dpi
SOURCE: Roland DGA Corporation
uni 32 9