[cups.general] Dye Sub Printer

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

Cefn Hoile <cups.org at cefn.com> writes:

> Does anyone know of a (Professional) Dye Sublimation printer which CUPS supports? I'd like to get one which I could get working with with Debian/Ubuntu. I'm finding it impossible to discover one with my usual web search methods.
> 
> Alternatively if anyone has a clue how to make a Mitsubishi D70DW Dye Sub printer accept print jobs from linux, (perhaps using a driver intended for a different device, or using some kind of raw communications) then I could use a printer which is already available to me.
> 
> The aim of using a Dye Sub printer with linux is to be able to automate the printing of high-quality images using a dedicated host machine configured with console scripts for this job. Regular printers won't meet the demands of the collaborators I'm working with in terms of quality or capacity.
> 
> I'd welcome any contributions at all if anyone out there has experience of CUPS with Dye Sub printers, in particular the Mitsubishi D70DW or equivalent.

Regarding dyesub, I am not sure if there are any of the type you are
interested in, but in the gutenprint there is some support for
dye-sublimation printers (the Canon ones use CMY inks
only). Currently, the Canon types (SELPHY range of photo printers)
require bi-directional communication with the driver, so a custom
backend is needed. This is actually written, but is not in
CUPS. Contact me if necessary on the gimp-print/gutenprint mailing
list.

The Canon dye-sub printers I believe use a system patented by the ALPS
company of Japan, who also produced a range of printers which could do
dye-sublimation printing (although normal CMYK was the main use of
their Micro Dry printing system). There is a linux open-source driver
for the entire ALPS range. The PPDs available for CUPS from
openprinting.org are not complete (do not expose all the
functionality), but the driver itself is complete.

There are also a few other dye-sub printers that are supported (using
drivers in the gutenprint project), so I understand they are all
pretty similar.  Perhaps you could post some questions on the
gimp-print mailing list (I seem to remember looking at something
related to a Mitsubishi printer on the ML beofre this).

Regards,
-- 
Gernot Hassenpflug