Electro-Photographic & Ink Jet Color Cartridge Yield Test Documents: Problems, Approaches, Suggestions

Abstract

Reliably determining the yield for color electro-photographic (EP) or inkjet (IJ, including solid ink) cartridges is important to all involved with color printing products. For manufacturers, it provides design specification for monitoring processes. For marketers, it helps positioning against competing products. For consumers, it facilitates assessment and comparison of cost-of-ownership.Efforts toward agreement on a standardized measurement methodology have raised significant issues. Factors such as determination of end-of-life, environmental operating conditions, and sample testing size can be leveraged from the monochrome EP standard effort. However, color test document content raises new and unique problems.Although this effort is focused on office users, consumers have similar needs. In today's office and consumer environments, most digital documents are created in an RGB color space. The conversion from this RGB space to an individual printer's CMYK toner or ink color space is unique to each printer. A discussion of the relationship of this issue to color toner or ink yield measurement follows, along with suggestions for the parameters defining a set of color test documents to standardize an appropriate solution.