[padg] RE: Preservation photocopiers

["D NISHIMURA" <dwnpph@xxxxxxx>]

 I'm not aware of any published research dealing with fixatives and
electrophotographic images (electrostatic copies). As far as I can tell,
the problem was never so bad for business graphs that industry had to do
something about it and the preservation copying piece of the market is
waaaaaaaay too small for their concerns to be dealt with. From the
imaging side, we've spent so much time the past several decades just
dealing with chemical forms of deterioration (that weren't really a
significant issue for electrophotography) that physical damage has only
very recently become of interest. It's so new that the field is still
trying to figure out how best to test the problems and how to measure
them. 

Fixatives may help, but watch the solvents. Most of the hot fixed
systems seem to use styrenes, acrylics (or methacrylates), or
styrene-acrylate co-polymers (or styrene-methacrylate co-polymers) as
their resins. These are not as sensitive as polycarbonates to solvent
damage, but there still are wrong choices that could be made that could
be very damaging.

-Doug
Image Permanence Institute
Rochester Institute of Technology