The History of Oce  

Oce was founded in 1877 and is headquartered in Venlo, the Netherlands.  A Dutch chemist started research on the manufacture of a butter coloring agent.  He then began large scale production of the product which was used to color both butter and margarine.  Oce continued to produce the product until 1970 when the butter coloring business was sold to the mega-corporation, Unilever.

In 1920, the company started their document copying business manufacturing blueprint paper.  During the 1920's, it was used for the reproduction of line originals.  However, the light sensitive coating caused difficulties in copying.  Attempts to correct the problem produced paper that had a longer shelf life but a slower development time.  In 1923, a German firm started Oce on the right track.  Unlike blueprints, on which white lines are reproduced on blue paper, this process known as diazo printing produced colored lines on white paper.  By the mid 1930's, Oce made a breakthrough when it developed a diazo application that allowed copies to be made of non-translucent originals.  It was known as RetOce and was the only process available for making copies inexpensively and easily.  Their dominance lasted until 1945 when electrophotographic copying became the preferred method of copying.

In the 1960's, Oce recognized the need for office copying.  By 1973, Oce introduced its first plain paper office copier, the Oce 1700.  Over the next several years, Oce designed plain paper copiers for the engineering community.  In 1983, it introduced its first wide format plain paper copier, the Oce 7500.

Through acquisitions and expansions in the latter part of the 20th century, Oce would offer a complete line of multi-function printers and document management software and services to a broad cross section of corporations, government bodies and educational institutions.  And it all started with butter.

  Generic vs. Customized
ICC Media Profiles  

An ICC profile is the final translator in your language equation.  When you are ready to send a file to your printer, you have a multitude of options.  You can choose to tackle these options yourself by downloading generic profiles from third party media suppliers or you can sit back and enjoy the work of the customized ICC profile that CAD Supplies Specialty has built for you.  These profiles can be installed in either the onboard driver of Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop, CorelDraw or a third party RIP (Raster Image Processor).  The ICC profile is essentially the translator.  It speaks the language of your digital file and that of your printer, RIP, ink, and media combination to insure they all speak the language.

Why all the fuss?  Don't most wide format printers claim to self calibrate?  Don't most printers come with customized settings for specific media?  You have seen them!  You pull down the media option in the print menu and the long list of media scrolls down.  Your media must be there somewhere?  When you select a media setting in the drivers pull down menu you might be giving the printer the wrong information!  These settings are designed to produce overall pleasing color with any media that fits the general type and finish suggested in the description.  These settings define parameters such as ink restrictions, color curves, carriage speeds, and droplet size that are very specific and are based on a particular media.  But which media are they based on?  Does the satin photo paper setting refer to the CAD Supplies media that you just loaded in your printer?  Does the CAD Supplies media have the same coating, the dame whiteness and the same brightness as the media used to create the generic ICC profile?

Most likely, the printer manufacturer used its own media to create the generic ICC profile in its firmware, in the printer driver menu.  If you are a customer of CAD Supplies you wont be using the printer manufacture media.  While many different medias may reproduce acceptable results with these settings, a customized ICC profile built by CAD Supplies will produce the most accurate results.  CAD Supplies creates profiles for specific printers, inks, medias, and RIP's.

The wrong combination of media and printer settings might affect more that just the color accuracy of your output.  If the media setting you select is based on a media that can accept a higher ink load, you might experience bleeding, as your printer will be laying down more ink than the media coating can accept, and certainly more ink that needed to achieve optimal density on that media.  That means you are wasting $money$ on ink, which is often a more expensive consumable than the media itself.

If your company has experienced some or all of these problems, CAD Supplies can take care of your headaches.  We have launched our color management program for all of our clients that currently buying media and inks from us.  We will come out to your location and profile your monitors (up to 5), medias, and your printer.  This is service we provide to you to ensure that you will produce the finest quality prints the first time.  You will notice that you will save graphic design time, media and ink.  This means you save lots of money.  Please give us a call to schedule your appointment.