My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

[Ian]

Despite feeling decidedly green because of stomach virus Monday, I did enjoy my second visit to HP's Dublin facility.

The place employs 1,600 people that work specifically on ink cartridge related jobs, including R&D and manufacturing.

Print heads for in-head cartridges are also manufactured there. The actual liquid inks are not manufactured by HP, but by specialist manufacturers according to HP-developed formulae.

Advances since my last visit in 2004 include the production of the latest single colour ink cartridges for the first time, plus the new Vivera dye-based inks and a demo of their new characteristics when used with the new HP Advanced Photo papers. Being able to make water-resistant glossy photo prints using water-soluble dye-based inks is quite a triumph. And these prints will last 50+ years under glass, which is approaching some pigment inks print fade resistance.

We had a very long debate about ink yields and costs. HP is very bullish about its overall cost per print performance compared to its rivals, but does concede that it needs to educate the public about how printers waste ink (HP believes its printers waste a lot less ink).

The Dublin plant does not manufacture Vivera Pro pigment inks for the higher-end and professional printers, though some of the R&D is done there.

And there was a reminder that HP offers free collection and recycling of all its spent ink cartridges, including laser toner cartridges.

Ian

[JSR]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Being able to make water-resistant glossy photo prints using water-soluble dye-based inks is quite a triumph.

A couple of years back, when I was deciding on what to do to replace my Epson 1290, I did several "water" tests with prints that were available to me. (I tested the 1290 on various papers, a print from the Epson Picturemate to gauge pigment inks, and a print from a HiTi dye-sub that my parents had.) I was really surprised at how well a print from the 1290 on Epson Premium Glossy Paper stood up to the water test - I had expected it to fail miserably.

My testing wasn't simply putting a few drops of water on the print and see what it did - my test covered different scenarios up to and including leaving the print half-submerged in a bowl of water for several minutes. And I didn't just flick the paper dry afterwards, I used drying methods that varied from simply sponging off with a kitchen towel all the way through to rubbing it off with a ton of elbow grease!

The one thing I learned is that the type of paper used is far more important than the inks in this type of printer. The photo on Epson Premium came away almost unharmed; the same photo on Epson Colorlife had the ink coming off with the paper unharmed; the same photo on standard Epson Photo Paper had the ink & paper coating coming off, resulting in a right mess. I gave away all my supplies of Photo Paper on that very day!

It was a good experiment for me because I really did not expect any water-resistant abilities from a dye-based printer that was so old. Of course, these days I use the R1800, so it's not an issue for me now.

[Ian]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

A couple of years back, when I was deciding on what to do to replace my Epson 1290, I did several "water" tests with prints that were available to me. (I tested the 1290 on various papers, a print from the Epson Picturemate to gauge pigment inks, and a print from a HiTi dye-sub that my parents had.) I was really surprised at how well a print from the 1290 on Epson Premium Glossy Paper stood up to the water test - I had expected it to fail miserably.

My testing wasn't simply putting a few drops of water on the print and see what it did - my test covered different scenarios up to and including leaving the print half-submerged in a bowl of water for several minutes. And I didn't just flick the paper dry afterwards, I used drying methods that varied from simply sponging off with a kitchen towel all the way through to rubbing it off with a ton of elbow grease!

The one thing I learned is that the type of paper used is far more important than the inks in this type of printer. The photo on Epson Premium came away almost unharmed; the same photo on Epson Colorlife had the ink coming off with the paper unharmed; the same photo on standard Epson Photo Paper had the ink & paper coating coming off, resulting in a right mess. I gave away all my supplies of Photo Paper on that very day!

It was a good experiment for me because I really did not expect any water-resistant abilities from a dye-based printer that was so old. Of course, these days I use the R1800, so it's not an issue for me now.

Yes, if memory serves me, Epson ColorLife and probably Epson Photo Paper have swellable surfaces, while Epson Premium Glossy is a microporous surface type. I'm sure you know this, but for those that don't, swellable surface papers encapsulate the dye and can protect it to a degree, while the dye molecules are unprotected on microporous surfaces. The advantages of microporous papers are a much better glossy shine and instant drying. It used to be that the protective nature of swellable papers gave them a significant fade resistance advantage, but advances in dye-based inks combined with improved microporous surfaces is resulting in big increases in fade resistance. HP Vivera dyes combined with their new Advanced Photo Paper, which is a microporous type, results in around 50 years fade resistance under glass.

As the surface of a swellable type photo paper is a gelatine-like polymer, it's not very resistant to mechanical abrasion and it's completely unprotected from water splashing or immersion. Dyes on microporous papers used to be vulnerable to running, but improvements have reduced this susceptability too.

Ian

[lumix]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Just how important is fade resist to the average photographer? I ask this as with more and more digital images being stored on DVD or CD disk the image is protected for life. It's no problem to reprint if the need arises in the future. I would guess, and it is only a guess, that most prints made today are only in circulation for a very short time. Long enough to show to friends and relatives then they end up in the bottom draw of some cabinet. I personal backup all my images to disk and those that are important also get put into a slideshow on DVD. I'm curious to know what others do and how much they rely on prints preserving their images.

[Ian]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Just how important is fade resist to the average photographer? I ask this as with more and more digital images being stored on DVD or CD disk the image is protected for life. It's no problem to reprint if the need arises in the future. I would guess, and it is only a guess, that most prints made today are only in circulation for a very short time. Long enough to show to friends and relatives then they end up in the bottom draw of some cabinet. I personal backup all my images to disk and those that are important also get put into a slideshow on DVD. I'm curious to know what others do and how much they rely on prints preserving their images.

Well, a lot of photo prints are stuck on notice boards, fridge doors, shop windows, etc. These are often sunny and humid environments that gang up on the colours in print. Photographic prints are now a big part of the fine art reproduction industry too, so longevity is particularly important there as well.

While the adage that digital images can always be reprinted has a ring of truth, the fact is that many people don't have access to the original file and even those that do may have great difficulty in finding it, so it's better that there is no need to make a replacement print every few years.

Ian

[JSR]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Just how important is fade resist to the average photographer? I ask this as with more and more digital images being stored on DVD or CD disk the image is protected for life. It's no problem to reprint if the need arises in the future. I would guess, and it is only a guess, that most prints made today are only in circulation for a very short time. Long enough to show to friends and relatives then they end up in the bottom draw of some cabinet. I personal backup all my images to disk and those that are important also get put into a slideshow on DVD. I'm curious to know what others do and how much they rely on prints preserving their images.

Think of it this way... In 30 years time you could have an unfaded photograph on your wall that you've been enjoying for a couple of decades. Or, you could have a photo that faded to oblivion 20+ years earlier and the only copy is on a CD that's considered an obsolete format that no one has produced a player for since 25 years earlier. How many of us can still read 5.25" floppy disks?

Having a print that can last the generations is far more valuable than having one stored on a digital format that (i) won't last anywhere near as long, and (ii) no one will be able to read in 30 years time even if the media had survived.

It's easier to say "ah, but I'd just copy the CD to the next newer format when it comes along", but how many of us would do that? I've had CD-Rs and CD-RWs that haven't survived a year, despite claims of "decades". When do you decide to make that new copy?

I've had people bring old worn photos to me that they either lost the negatives for, or didn't have the negatives in the first place. The photos are bent, creased, and torn - which you'd expect from spending decades in various locations from frames to shoeboxes. Yet, because there is sufficient colour there I've been able to scan, restore the original colours, fix the cracks, creases and tears, and reprint the photo in the full knowledge that it'll, again, last the decades.

Take someone your cracked or scratched CD in 30-40 years time, and see if they can do the same.

The way I see it, there's nothing more tangible than a bit of paper.

[lumix]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Ian/JSR you both make very valid points. What we need is an indestructible storage medium. No one will be complaining to HP in 50 years time that their prints have faded, so these are promises that will never be challenged. I'm surprised to learn that DVDs or CDs lose their data with age. Damage wise they are as venerable as any print. I guess it's the method of burning disk as opposed to pressing disk that makes them lose data. For me it's a question of cost. Also it's questionable whether my images are important enough to preserve that long. We tend to take far more pictures now that we have digital and really most, other than record shots of family, don't need to be kept for future generations to view.

[JSR]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Ian/JSR you both make very valid points. What we need is an indestructible storage medium. No one will be complaining to HP in 50 years time that their prints have faded, so these are promises that will never be challenged. I'm surprised to learn that DVDs or CDs lose their data with age. Damage wise they are as venerable as any print. I guess it's the method of burning disk as opposed to pressing disk that makes them lose data. For me it's a question of cost. Also it's questionable whether my images are important enough to preserve that long. We tend to take far more pictures now that we have digital and really most, other than record shots of family, don't need to be kept for future generations to view.

I agree for the most part. We take hundreds, even thousands, of photos these days that it'd be silly to print them all out. No one has a shoebox *that* big! But, at the same time, if there is a photo you're really pleased with and you'd like it to still be around when you're drawing your pension, a printed copy with pigment inks is the way to go.

It's not really a case of no one challenging HP or Epson over their claims, it's a test of comparisons. If an independent body tests several different ink/paper combinations, and some are shown to last significantly longer than others, then that's the combination to use. That's how I view the Wilhelm tests. I take those claims of 100+ years, 300+ years, 400+ years, etc with a huge pinch of salt. However, if one ink/paper combination is listed at 5 years, and the other is listed at 100 years, it'll be the latter I'll want to use - even if it's grossly exaggerated. I mean, even if the tests are exaggerated by a factor of 3 then the 100 years comes down to 30 - but, in comparison, the 5 years comes down to a matter of months. So I'd still want to go with the latter combination. It's also worth noting that these tests are quoted as "until noticeable fading occurs" - which means they don't suddenly go white. There'll be a considerable period beyond this point in which the photos are still viewable - but they'd adopt a colour cast (because some colours fade quicker than others). Even with today's technology, a quick scan and a few clicks on the "auto correct" buttons will solve that, so we can reasonably expect the printed photo to be salvageable for some consderable time later.

Even the question of cost isn't so relevant to some degrees. If you've been out for the day and have taken 100 shots - of which there's just one you *really* like and would want to keep for posterity, then a Picturemate will print it for 12.5p (no more than the cost of the CD) and it'll last for 100+ years. I think 12.5p is a bargain for something that'll outlive me by a couple of generations. Of course it would make sense to print that longlife print *and* store all 100 shots on a CD - but at least in the event of the CD being unrecoverable some years later, that pigment photo will still be around to tell the story. So it's not about saying that "print is better than CD" or "CD is better than print", it's a case of knowing that both print and CD have their place.

When I got my first digital camera, I took loads of photos of places I went to. Now, 7 years later, I don't have those photos. I thought I'd done enough backups to ensure they'd stay safe but they didn't. Fortunately I'd put some on a web-page so I can at least remember the times from low-res images, but it's a lesson I've learned the hard way.

I have a dozen or so 5.25" floppy disks from my BBC Micro days - although they don't have photos on them (fairly obviously), they do have some old articles and stories on them. Barely 20 years later and I can't use the disks without seeking out some dedicated source and paying over the odds. So when I look at photos, I don't put all my eggs in one basket and say "with digital storage, who needs to print or prints that last?" If you're lucky enough to have a decent quality DVD or CD that lasts 20 years, the situation will probably be the same - you won't be able to read them. We might be rigid enough in our methods to copy to fresh medium every few years, or to adopt each new technology as it comes along - hopefully we will, but when I'm in my 70s I don't think I'll be all that interested in copying my digital files to the latest ultrasuperholographicstoragedisc or whatever we have by then, but I will be interested in looking back to my youth with the aid of the photos I took at the time. That's the way I look at it.

As you say, we ideally need an indestructible storage medium but it also needs to be one that we'll be able to read from for the next several decades. In this technological age in which manufacturers want to change everything every three years just to get more money out of us, I can't see this happening.

[Alchemist]

Re: My visit to HP's inkjet cartridge plant in Dublin

Ian,

Great to read your notes from the visit to HP.
Just thought that I would mention that Graphic Utilities was offering, in the UK and US, a water fast, dye ink set, for HP products starting with the 500 series of printers. This was done while Dupont (HP supplier) was still struggling to make a good water fast ink.

Alchemist