This is a very interesting comment.  I have examined a print made with
the Primera via dye-sub and was extremely impressed with it.  I will
follow up soon with a comment on these points.
 
Tony Moss
 
 
On Thu, 30 Jun 1994, Steven D. Majewski wrote:
 
> On Jun 28, 14:09, Patty Jansma wrote:
> >
> > Has anyone heard of a Primera Color printer? We received an ad today a dye
> >  sub/thermal wax printer for $949. Dye sub prints are $2.79 each and
> > thermal wax are $.45.
> >
> >
>
>
> There is a review of dye-sub printers in July-94 MacWorld.
> We also just had a demo of the Seiko ColorPoint-2 dual
> wax/dye-sub printer, which left me quite impressed.
> The Seiko is new and was not able to be included in the
> review, but they mentioned it in a side bar explaining the
> difference in the method used by Seiko vs the Primera.
>
> In it they explain that wax printing is a binary process -
> either the dye melts or it doesn't, and there is a sharp
> edge to each dot, while dye-sub produces continuous tones
> because the hotter the element, the greater density of dye
> it transfers. Also, the dye-sub pixel have soft edges and
> have to be placed closer than wax or white-space gaps between
> the pixels will degrade image quality. The Seiko overcomes
> this by double-stepping the media with two smaller pixels
> placed side-by-side.
>
> Quoting the side-bar to the review article:
>
> "In contrast, Fargo Electronics' inexpensive dual-mode Primera
> disreguards the subtle differences between dye and wax heads and uses
> a single temperature for bothe dye and wax. A dither pattern creates
> multiple colors in dye as well as was. This yields output inferior
> to that of the Seiko method."
>
>
> -- Steve Majewski       (804-982-0831)      <[log in to unmask]> --
> -- UVA Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics --
> -- Box 449 Health Science Center        Charlottesville,VA 22908 --
>
>    [ "Cognitive Science is where Philosophy goes when it dies ...
>         if it hasn't been good!" - Jerry Fodor  ]
>