Welcome to Fractal Forums

Start at the beginning?  M'kay!  First machine was an Apple ][+ and I used it to program in as many of the programming examples in Sci-American for fun graphics.  First ran into Fractint in it's 7.0 incarnation when I was running an 8088 & Hercules card.  Mmmm, dreams of color!  Finally got a 386-25 and Fractint was the real reason I dug up an FPU chip, not Acad.

So fast-forward to now!  I've got a little custom graphics side business along with a lot of other little side businesses.  The thing that's made this possible is this sweet little item I've found, something the print companies would rather you not know about.  Continuous ink system!  My ink costs are so low now that I can crank through what would be a full cartridge system and not give a damn.  I made a wee bit of vid to show off how it works to my friends, check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2SPoVu18HQ

So yah, all I do now is pour ink out if the big bottles and into the little bottles.  No syringes, no refills, no nada.  If you do any sort of printing at all you should really see if there's a system like this for your model.  Seriously, check this...  I'll soon have an entire fractal wall for my new living space.  Here's a few test-prints.
http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f21/Atomicrap/Farm/Pics1073s.jpg

Groovy!  Now if only I can get it to color-cycle.  Guess I'll have to go see my old "Uncle Syd" for that.

Atomicat

P.S.  I'm trying to start up a little artist/techie retreat up here for fun collaborative projects.  I call my space "Strange Attractor" of course.

that's pretty interesting, i'd love to be able to make huuuge prints of my renders. i often render images in excess of 25k by 16k, and naturally i'd like to see them in print too... how does one get started with this printing scheme?

Well I went with an Epson 1280 because I knew the ink system was available for it.  Basically you just google "Continuous ink feed" and your printer model and see what's there.  I went with the system from "Ink Republic" and they've been fine.  The 1280 is a wide-body so does up to 13" wide.  For huge wall prints I've been buying these cheap poster-boards for 0.75 a sheet and that gives me four 11x14" sheets.  After that it's just a matter of printing em up and fitting the panels together.

'tomix

Greetings, and Welcome to this particular Forum!!

Version 7.0 of FractInt, huh??   That was early in 1989, when Timothy Wegner became the driving force (Bert Tyler being the original author for Versions 1.0 through 6.1).   And work is still going on with the program these days.



When you say "up here", does that mean around the Winnipeg, Manitoba area of Canada??

Stone-Henge, Fractint, Pyramids, whatever.  :D  Call it what you will.

Yep!  North of Winterpeg actually by about a three hours drive.  Next stop north?  North of North!

'tomix