Design Supply Blog

Last June Alistair Wright and Ian Stapleton attended the launch in Rome of the latest range of HP Designjets which included the new Designjet T610 and the Designjet T1100.
We have been waiting for HP to respond to the Canon imagePROGRAF range and at last HP have something to shout about!

The new HP Designjet T Printer series, which includes the HP Designjet T610 and T1100 Printer series, set a new standard of print quality with its three-black ink set, including grey ink, and HP Vivera inks, delivering exacting detail, a wider range of colours and hard-to-achieve tone reproduction. The HP Designjet T Printer series builds upon the proven reliability of HP large-format printers by adding enhanced compatibility and dependability delivered by HP-GL/2 and in-printer processing architecture. These printers can print an A1/D page in 35 seconds enabling project print speeds up to three times faster than the previous printer, the HP Designjet 800 series.

This new range from HP is perfect for CAD, AEC, GIS professionals.

Available in 610 mm and 1118 mm models, the HP Designjet T Printer series features the three-black ink set which produces true neutral greys, enabling enhanced detail and hard-to-achieve tones. HP Vivera inks produce images with even, subtle contrast from vivid colour to soft tones. And with HP’s innovative print head design, the printing system produces pinpoint line accuracy and crisp text with improved line accuracy at 0.1 % and 0.0423 mm minimum line width, allowing CAD and GIS professionals to produce standout drawings and presentations with better readability.

In addition, the HP Designjet T Printer series offers remarkable compatibility with CAD and GIS applications thanks to embedded industry standard HP-GL/2 language. HP has partnered with key companies to ensure HP Designjet T Printer series users have connectivity and software compatibility with the industry’s major CAD and GIS applications needed to produce high-quality prints. The HP Designjet T Printer series' in-printer processing architecture enables quick, efficient processing of files in the printer – no matter what the complexity – without tying up workstation or requiring powerful networks and computer devices.

The HP Designjet T1100 Printer series, including the HP Designjet T1100, T1100ps and T1100MFP, is ideal for CAD and GIS work groups who need to efficiently share a printer among multiple users in a network environment. The HP Designjet T1100ps is uniquely designed for applications with PDF and PostScript workflows. The HP Designjet T1100MFP brings together features of the HP Designjet T1100ps 1118 mm printer and complete scan and copy functionality in high resolutions delivering precise and detailed scans and output.

Ideal for the CAD and GIS professionals who require convenient printing in-house, the HP Designjet T610 is perfect for personal use in smaller offices and studio environments.

As can be seen from these exciting additions to large format market place, there are many models and product lines to choose from and the T series represents a small part of the huge overall range that is offered by Design Supply Ltd. We have been providing large format printing solutions and advice for over fifteen years, the team, now sixteen strong; have some 60 years large format printing experience between them. All of advisors are certified and tested to the standard required by each of the major manufacturers, these being Epson, Hewlett Packard and Canon. The company as a whole is accredited as an HP Channel Partner, an Epson Pro Focus Dealer and a Canon Large Solutions Business Partner. Each advisor is authorized to sell all the three major brands, meaning that they can assess your needs without bias and recommend the right solution.

With a range that now runs to over 150 machines, we have the right solution for you, guaranteed!

With a team that is separately dedicated to media and consumables, we also have media solutions that are imported from all over the world. (As well as sourcing as many products as we can locally). With over 1000 types of Inkjet media available, again, we can match your needs exactly. All our medias are tested in house before going on sale, to give consistency in terms of quality, as well as achieving the legendary value for money that the company is known for. Any printer is only as good as the media it uses, and our aim is for all for all our clients to get the best out of their machines, whether these are new machines, or ones that have been owned for many years.

Call us today for advice on medias, ink, large format printers, software solutions or calibration tools. We can help!

(If we can help you with a demonstration or any further information go back to the main site CLICK HERE)

email sales@designsupply.com or call 0800-018-23-23

Just a quick note confrm we will be at Focus on Imaging this year!

FOCUS ON IMAGING 2008 will be held in Halls 9,10 at the National Exhibition Centre. Birmingham, England from the 24th February - 27th February 2008.

FOCUS ON IMAGING is Europe's biggest annual imaging show, covering all your needs from image capture through to output and beyond.

Whether you are a professional image maker or processor, a buyer of image making equipment or materials, a manufacturer or distributor of products or a keen hobbyist, a visit to FOCUS ON IMAGING is a must.

Over 200 exhibitors and product launches galore - including all the very latest digital cameras and processing equipment - will feature at FOCUS 2008.

If you need a ticket let us know!

Our latest crazy idea!

Fall in love with your HP Designjet printer all over again!

Design Supply provides discerning and stylish customers with chic, handmade protective covers for your HP Designjet. These have been specially made for us to sell here in the U.K.

(To see more on this new product on main site CLICK HERE)

Invisible armies of dust cause the vast majority of computer hardware problems. To protect valuable computer equipment, people who value quality are stuck with boring, ill-fitting, mass-produced options for protecting their gear. We change that. Offering limited edition and customized protective equipment, our 100% cotton, handcrafted covers seamlessly integrate with your decorative method while protecting your equipment with quality and good taste.

Offering a tremendous array of unique covers for computer equipment - from the simple to the simply fabulous - choose Design Supply for unique protective equipment. Offering quantity discounts and backed by personal service and a 100% quality guarantee, we protect equipment, safeguard information, and guard against system death, all with style and flair.

From the small glimpse we have seen-the ink, printed samples, new printhead technology, the various presentations and discussions with the product managers and experts this looks very interesting.

HP, however, is not unique in trying to develop a new ink technology to replace aggressive solvent. Industry-wide, there seems to be a general consensus that solvent has a short life span, but until an alternative is found that offers the same kind of reliability and product characteristics-outside durability, scratch- and smudge-resistance, the ability to print on the same range of media as solvent, the ability to print on flexible media surfaces without cracking, a wide color gamut-and a low or comparable price point, there is limited reason for many to switch. Especially because these inks require a new printing platform.

According to HP, the new latex inks-which are 70 percent aqueous-based-will offer both the price point and all the same properties as solvent inks but without the harmful VOCs. This is all well and good, but the one snag, as mentioned before, is that these inks won't work in the current range of printing equipment currently on the market. The new inks have been developed for use with the Edgeline printheads which offer a 4.25-inch-wide swath and 10,000+ nozzles per head.

But then, there is still the media that needs to be taken into consideration. Creating environmentally-friendly print media is the next step to creating a truly green printing option. While the new latex inks can print on vinyl, that doesn't really provide a fully "green" solution. HP also announced the availability of media with recycled content, but this is also an area that requires innovation and we know several companies are already researching media alternatives to the environmentally-unfriendly and low-cost media currently on the market.

Good news with the recent introduction of pigment printers from both HP and Canon have finally added competition to the market that has been owned by Epson for years. Not being content to merely catch up to Epson though, HP has taken a large step forward with the new Z2100 and Z3100 photo printers. Both printers, available in 24" and 44" sizes, use the new Vivera pigment inks first seen in the B size PhotoSmart Pro B9180 printer.

The Z series is also the first printer that includes a built-in spectrophotometer for creating custom profiles.

Pigment inks have two major advantages over dye-based inks. First, archival life is much greater, with most offering 70 or more years of display life before visible fading occurs. The Vivera inks in the new HP printers are rated by Wilhelm Research at 200 years for both colour and black-and-white prints. The other primary advantage is the variety of media available. While dye ink printers are optimized to work with luster and gloss finish papers, pigments can print on almost any surface.

Albert Watson is everywhere. If you are riding the bus or walking down the street, flipping through a magazine or watching TV, chances are, you will see an Albert Watson photograph. With a photography career that spans more than 40 years, his work stretches from fine art that is shown around the world to commercial projects that include the covers of Vogue and Rolling Stone.

Whether preparing for worldwide exhibitions or creating fine art prints, Watson takes on two equally important roles, photographer and printmaker. As a printmaker, he strives for greater control when translating his vision to the page, and the new HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer delivers exactly that with its exhibition quality, consistency and performance.

The HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer provides the high-quality colour and black-and-white prints required by Watsons diverse portfolio, which ranges from celebrities and royalty to precious artefacts and personal travels. What is more, it affords Watson the control he needs to communicate his vision and continue his success as both an artist and a business owner.

One of the most important things to a photographer is the translation from the eye to the film, the film to the screen, and the screen to the paper, explains Watson. The translation the HP Designjet Z3200 achieves is amazing.

Watson demands perfection from his photo printers. Using the HP Designjet Z3200 expanded colour gamut, including the new HP 73 Chromatic Red ink, he achieves enhanced shades of red, green and blue. And, HP Quad-Black ink delivers outstanding, true neutral greys for breathtaking black-and-white prints.

You can translate work that you have done onto a piece of paper using the HP Designjet Z3200 and get this kind of depth, quality and vibrancy and it provides what a photographer wants more than anything else, consistency.

When printing a series of photos or limited editions, the HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer ensures Watson gets reliable, accurate colour time after time. From the captured image to the finished print, the HP Colour Centre makes profiling and calibration easy, using the embedded spectrophotometer with i1 colour technology.

With HP innovation as a backdrop, Watson can operate more efficiently, allowing him to focus on what matters most, his art. Watson has used HP Designjet Z-series printing technology for more than a year, and the Z3200 is the latest addition to his studio. So far, he has produced thousands of square feet of prints on his HP Designjet Z-series printers.

Watsons printing stays up and running thanks to proactive and preventive maintenance enabled by the HP Designjet Z3200 Photo Printers ink and print head technology:

Optimized performance, maximized print head life and great ink efficiency result from proactive automatic servicing routines

Printing errors and media waste are virtually eliminated thanks to the Optical Drop Detector, which helps prevent clogged nozzles

And, with support for more than 50 types of HP large-format printing materials, he can easily switch between the media he uses most, including HP Super Heavyweight Plus Matte Paper and HP Matte Litho-realistic Paper. What is more, when using HP printing materials, the HP Vivera pigment inks offer long-lasting, water-resistant colour that resists fading for more than 200 years.

The art of printmaking

Somebody else printing your work does not make sense to me at all. You have to make it yourself, and the HP Designjet Z3200 is a remarkable piece of technology to do this.

The new HP Designjet Z3200 delivers what fine art photographers have always wanted, the ability to control their work from beginning to end. Now realizing their vision is easier than ever before.

All the latest information from Design Supply (To see more details visit the main site CLICK here.