P3D stereojet

[John Toeppen <toeppen@xxxxxxxx>]

There is some misunderstanding about the stereojet process. 

"What does the ink material cost anyway? Are they
charging for hours and hours of image processing or just for
outrageously
expensive inks?"

The inks are dichroic and diffuse into the polarizing sheet material. 
The polarizing sheet material has perpendicular oriented PVA on opposite
sides of the mylar base.  This is not the normal high volume production
stuff, it is a special short run experimental material.  Years of work
have gone into this to get this far by Jay, Vivian, and others at
Rowland as well as Ed and others at the SlideFactory.  Consistent
material has been very difficult, time consuming, and expensive to
produce.

The inks must permeate through a gel layer before they hit the PVA and
this takes time and space.  Then the gel is washed off. It is not
trivial to do, and is of much better quality than the old iodine
vectograph process.

Oh, and the images must take a tour through Photoshop and be in
registration.

These are not Nimslo photos.  These are for presentations and permanent
display applications.  This is not an unheard of pricing for this kind
of application.  What do you think that a dye transfer print would cost
these days?

If you choke on the price of something don't buy it.  I didn't buy a VCR
at 2K, 1K, or $500 bucks.  I waited.  I let those with the money spend
it, and I saw prices go down with volume.  Those who have worked on this
for years at a loss are trying to cover their costs.  I am just glad
that it was developed at all.  The few that I have are quite
impressive.  And I hope to purchase some for a display application. 
Until you have seen these you may underestimate their value.

John Toeppen

http://members.home.com/holographics/