Inkjet printing larger than 64"

[artcorr]

I'm trying to find some info (and not having much luck) on inkjet printing larger than the max allowable by the biggest Epsons which is 64" on the short end.

I've seen prints by multiple photographers with short edges of over 80" so I know it's been done.

Any idea if this is done by splicing multiple prints together or are there larger printers out there?

[Oren Grad]

If you've got $90,000 to burn, the F-series Epsons go up to 76 inches.

[Kiwi7475]

There’s some, probably not cheap.
This one up to 120”, they also have 80” ones:

https://www.efi.com/products/inkjet-printing-and-proofing/efi-wide-format-printers/efi-pro-30h/overview/

[Tin Can]

Wallpaper

https://www.megaprint.com/permanent_wallpaper.php?area=wPaper

USA

[Ron McElroy]

One thing to keep in mind when dealing with most wide format printing companies is their customer base is commercial signage. The substrates and inks may not be what you desire. Certainly their are printers that specialize in fine art, but I do not know of any.

[bob carnie]

Metro Imaging UK and one in Germany can make supersised C prints.. I have a 60 inch Canon, Epson make 64 inch.
You also could look into flat bed printing super sized. Lamont Imaging in NY may be a place to start.

[Drew Wiley]

Apprentice to a master wallpaper hanger. Not much difference. But wet mounting is an acquired skill best consigned to a framing shop that already has the skills and equipment, like a huge vacuum press. It will be expensive. Regardless, even if you get it all printed onto a single huge sheet, it will still have to be mounted somehow. Best to get it all done by the same place, and then figure out how to ship the darn thing.

And note the important distinction Ron made. Advertising expectations and personal expectations might differ significantly.

[martiansea]

Many of Jeff Wall's famous lightbox pieces are two stitched together. That shows it's possible to do it that way, at least.

[Drew Wiley]

Stitching big transparencies together is especially tricky because the laminate material itself has a totally unforgiving permanent acrylic adhesive. Not like wet mounting, where the biggest risk is getting something wet and sticky on the surface of the print. With high-tack acrylic foils, one little wrinkle or bubble, or annoying speck inside, and the whole job is ruined. Smaller work, especially in the past, was simply sandwiched between sheets of Plexiglas.

The largest such job I ever saw was a digitally stitched together b&w shot of incredible detail of the backside of the moon taken and printed by NASA. At some point in the project, my nephew worked at a multimillion dollar stitching station at LBL, in front of a screen six feet wide, long before PS stitching came on the horizon. Tens of thousands of individual satellite images were involved overall, and no doubt many more persons took rounds at that station over several years. But the seamless physical stitching of the actual printed portions of that, involving maybe twenty sections overall, well, that was another humdinger entirely. The displayed full thing was about around forty feet in diameter if I recall correctly, but unlike a big billboard, held immaculate detail up close; and the seams were almost impossible to detect. And it helped to have a NASA sized budget.

Really amazing physical sheet stitching is being done in Las Vegas, with entire giant hallways of faux printed marble walls and ornate ceiling paintings as if it were the Sistine chapel being wallpapered on by expert paper hangers. One of the most difficult tasks is mirror laminates, where even the slightest unevenness in flatness stands out like a sore thumb. The kind of spray contact adhesives used for that can literally be lethal; and a short life is one of the known occupational hazards.

[artcorr]

Thank you for the replies everyone


Many of Jeff Wall's famous lightbox pieces are two stitched together. That shows it's possible to do it that way, at least.

Jeff Wall was one of the photographers I was referencing, it seems he's likely doing that with inkjet prints now too. Since posting, another I've noticed listed that it was printed on a paper that doesn't come wider than 64" as far as I know, so again likely stitched together.

[Joshua Dunn]

I can't imagine that the EFI printer could compare in quality to a fine art Canon or Epson printer. The other problem you are going to run into is good paper. Unless you custom order it you're not going to be able to find a paper larger than 60" worth calling a fine art print. As a printer, Epson can go to 64" however most fine art paper manufacturers only go to 60". All the work I have ever seen that is larger on the short end of 60" has been made on a commercial printer. So you may have to choose size verses quality.

-Joshua

[Bruce Watson]

I'm trying to find some info (and not having much luck) on inkjet printing larger than the max allowable by the biggest Epsons which is 64" on the short end.

They are out there, but they generally are not pigment ink printers. Mostly they are either UV cure or dye sublimation printers or solvent ink printers (which can be pigments). And they don't come from the traditional (I love that -- an industry that's like all of 15 years old is "traditional") big three of Canon, Epson, or HP. These are graphics arts printers from companies like Agfa, Xerox, and DGI. Agfa has printers that can print on a web 3.2m wide for example. DGI uses solvent pigment inks, prints using piezeo drop-on-demand heads somewhat similarly to Epson, and can print at 400x400 ppi, and out to about 2.37m wide, but it's a four ink system (designed for advertising, not fine arts).

Roland used to be the bridge between the wide format graphics arts world and the fine art printing world, but it looks like they've shrunk their biggest printers to meet the "industry standard" of 64" (which implies that the whole industry is in America, since America is the only country left using imperial units, sigh...).

Anyway, the keyword for searching is "wide format" and not really "large format" because of course the printing world uses different terminology than the photography world.

[bob carnie]

I am starting to investigate UV pigment printing on flatbed this month , I am going first to discuss this with my Durst rep.

[angusparker]

C prints are probably the best option by a professional shop.

[Drew Wiley]

Bruce - there is no such thing as a pigment ink printer. No set of consistently real pigments would squeeze through those tiny programmable nozzles. That's the limiting common-denominator priority with those systems. The particles first of all have to be tiny, and then every other factor is subsidiary. So, not only are there inkjet printers in contrast to dye printers; but it's incorrect to classify those inks as pigments to begin with, and misleading to market them as pigment prints - they're not. They're actually complex blends of fine pigments, lakes (dyed inert particles), and actual dyes. Halftone press inks work on a somewhat different premise.

Bob has apparently left behind laser printing onto RA4 C paper in order to concentrate on both inkjet printing commercially, as well as true layered pigment printing, which requires UV exposure. There are all kinds of hypothetical options out there for large prints, including thermal printing. But inkjet is the most common these days. I do C-printing optically, using enlargers, but have no interest in big just for sake of big, so limit myself to up to 30X40 inch prints, a nice size still capable of great detail when viewed up close, especially when enlarging form 8x10 color film.

[Jim Noel]

I have a close friend who can print up to 10 ft wide, any length.

[Joshua Dunn]

Drew,

With respect, modern printers like the Canon printers I use, use pigment. It's explained pretty well in this article (https://www.tavco.net/articles/awesomeness-of-canon-lucia-pigment-plotter-ink). I have been printing on with pigment based printers for years.

You are correct (at least to the best of my knowledge) that the larger printers discussed in this thread are not pigment based.

-Joshua

[daisy9]

I imagine the commands to make an inkjet printer print in color may be complex and larger in size, therefore, more than a C64 can handle by itself. The size of the driver itself could be quite large. Not to mention, most Commodore printer drivers are written for dot-matrix printers. I would even go as far as to say modern printers like these (https://43dprint.org/best-3d-printers-under-2000/) do not have the facilities to process a text dump properly. Kinda like "winmodems".

If your printer is a little older, it may still support text dumps. In that case you would be printing straight black, and would probably work. You'd have to forget graphics and fonts, though. Now, if there were some kind of hardware interface for it, like the Xtec, but something made for modern printers....