FARGO electronic 76505, 76501, 76502, 76504 Introduction, How Your PrimeraPro Color Printer Works

A. How Your

PrimeraPro Color

Printer Works

PrimeraPro utilizes two different, yet closely related printing technologies to achieve its remarkable outputÑwax thermal transfer and dye- sublimation.

Wax thermal transfer is a process which uses a wax based ribbon roll that is partitioned by a number of consecutive 9" x 14" colored panels. The panels are grouped in a repeating series of three separate colors, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow (C,M,Y), along the entire length of the ribbon. A fourth black panel (C,M,Y,K) is often added along with the other three colors to achieve prints with a more dense, or ÒtrueÓ black. PrimeraPro always prints the yellow panel first, followed by the magenta panel, the cyan panel, and finally the black panel, if you are using a four-color ribbon.

As the ribbon and paper pass simultaneously beneath the print head, the thousands of thermal elements within the print head melt the waxed- based ink, thus transferring thousands of tiny colored dots from the ribbon onto the paper. The paper makes a separate pass for each colored panel on the ribbon. By combining the different colored dots in different combinations (this process is called ÒditheringÓ), PrimeraPro is able to print an almost infinite number of different color combinations.

Dye-sublimation is similar to wax thermal transfer in that it still involves a three color, three pass process beneath the same thermal printhead. The difference, however, lies within the special dye- sublimation ribbon and paper and in the transfer process itself. Unlike the wax thermal ribbon, each colored panel on the dye-sublimation ribbon is composed of a colored dye rather than a colored wax based ink. When the dyes on the ribbon are heated beneath the thermal printhead, they vaporize and diffuse into the surface of the special dye receptive paper. By varying the heat intensity of each thermal element within the printhead, it is possible for each transferred dot of color to vary in hue, thus blending one color into the next. The result? Continuous-tone, photo-realistic color images.

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Introduction

Thank you for choosing the

FARGO PrimeraPro Color Printer. PrimeraPro has been designed to provide you with stunning, high quality color output on paper, transparency film and even T-shirt transfer paper. It offers many features to make printing full-color charts, graphs, photos, illustrations, and monochrome text very fast, easy and exciting.

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