John Higbie Invents! Watch This (Pt/Pd laser printer)

[Oren Grad]

Right, we don't know what fixed costs each needs to amortize.

It is a unique and ingenious service... Still though, far too rich for my blood.

Agree!

[John Layton]

Could be used remotely? Adjusted files sent from wherever to a lazer pt/pd (or silver I'd imagine) printing facility? Finished prints then rolled up and placed in tubes and sent wherever? Hmmm...

[Tin Can]

I'm thinking it may be the cheapest way

but I will never pay that

[Vaughn]

Cool. Not interested in going that route...
...except for the possibility of making books, very expensive books. Along the lines of Carleton Watkins' books of mammoth plate albumin prints.
That would be super cool and need deep-pocketed patrons!

[Michael R]

Cool, but unless for some reason someone wants big Platinum prints, I don’t think it offers anything vs either doing it yourself or skipping the whole silly thing and making inkjet prints. Then again that’s a somewhat more generalized view of Platinum/Palladium printing.

[Vaughn]

One could think of them as very stable inkjet prints, I suppose. I wonder if they'll have the same banding issues. Also, a price comparison per square inch for the cost of the pt/pd vs the ink would be interesting.
He just needs to invent a machine that will spray-coat the pt/pd solution on the paper, dry it, and send it straight to the drum for exposure.

[Thad Gerheim]

Isn't this just like running a drum scanner in reverse? I need to find the reverse switch on my scanner.

[jp]

It's a little bit like making printing plates directly. Or the old iris printers which had no problem with banding. Expensive complicated stuff. banding is really a cheap consumer printer artifact or something is all wrong.

[Kiwi7475]

I’m mostly impressed by the ingenuity here, the engineering skills, and the passion — which I’m not clear where it comes from, was he a LF photographer making pt/pd and it came from there? Such a jump from his daily job in terms of application.

Thanks for sharing..

[Vaughn]

My guess is that since he started out with the idea of using silver gelatin paper, he saw that it was already done, and switched to pt/pd to produce something new. In theory, it should work for most UV-exposed alt processes.

I wonder if he is using UVC. That would be too dangerous for normal printing, but it would help keep the exposure 'time' down.