Preview of the Colorspan DisplayMaker Mach 12.

What most impresses us about this printer is its capability to do linearize the color density of the ink lay-down. Usually you have to buy several thousand dollars worth of software and spectrophotometer to handle this.

But the on-board colormetric photo diode image sensor allows you to combine after-market color management software to create ICC color profiles.

Color management uncertainty is the problem that all first-time users have. Yet here is a printer which has two colormetric image sensors built into the printer.

For example, we get more users of Roland who state they are unable to accomplish the colors they need (especially cyan and reds). Yet here is a printer (the Mach 12) which is so much faster than the Roland and whose inks have an outstanding color gamut to begin with. Plus, the Mach 12 allows you to install and practice color management to be sure you get the cyan, blue, reds, pinks and everything else that your clients need.

It is noteworthy that when any piezo printer claims high speeds they turn out to be relatively slow. Thus we are pleased to have the thermal printhead technology of the ColorSpan DisplayMaker Mach 12 arrive at the FLAAR facilities at Bowling Green State University. Thermal printheads of ColorSpan, HP, and Encad tend to be faster than piezo heads of Epson, Mutoh or Roland.

Over the past year we have watched at tradeshows across the USA and Europe as the printer technology of the ColorSpan Mach 12 has matured. Now that the printer has hit its stride we felt it was time to bring one in-house so we could examine it in person. Three years ago the early production models had severe banding at high speeds. The new production models have overcome that defect to the point that at photo quality modes (the slower speeds) we have not had any banding whatsoever.

And the colors from the eight color mode really pop. We look forward to adding the new colors which arrived this month. That makes the Mach 12 the only full 12-color printer in the world.

ColorSpan Mach X12 at SGIA

Quad-black inset plus for ColorSpan DisplayMaker Mach 12.

This printer offers speed that other printers can only dream about. The Mach 12 can be run at dual 6-ink mode to produce both quality and speed simultaneously. Besides, the Mach 12 can be delivered now. It is an actual functioning model long ago out of beta stage. Besides, the output from the Mach 12 does not require lamination (which is required on nano-porous media used by other printers such as Kodak 5260).

The color management capabilities of the Mach 12 are unique.

The photos here are from the printer at tradeshows; just as soon as this model is moved from our old building (College of Technology) to our evaluation new facility across campus we will replace these pictures with in-situ shots.

What we especially look forward to on the Mach 12 is being able to use a quad-black inkset simultaneously with seven additional colors (total of 11 inks). We can also choose 12 colors but we wanted to use quad black as part of the set; that configuration is 4 + 7 = 11. We have twelve full colors in the DisplayMaker XII on the other side of our FLAAR lab at the university.

Today (2007), the water-based printers are no longer manufactured by ColorSpan. MacDermid concentrates on producing user-friendly UV-curable inkjet printers such as the 5440uv and 9840uv printers.

Most recently updated July 31, 2007.
Previous updates: Nov. 12, 2002, August 16, 2002, Jan 6, 2002.