Epson l1800 pigment or solvent ink ?!

[Hope]

Hi ...

I want to buy Epson L1800 ,but I don't want to use dye ink. Can you help me what should I choose the pigment or eco solvent ink ???

I print some magazines and photos on glossy paper

I have Epson l328 using dye ink and when I print on glossy paper the black color becomes wet and I don't want that happen when I use Epson L1800

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The L1800 is an A3 larger format printer - is that necessary ? Are you using the Epson inks - 664 ?
I think you are talking about the L382, not the L328 ?? That unit, the print mechanism is based on the WF-2010W which uses pigment inks and is not using the black ink when printing on photo paper but mixing the black, that explains why your paper gets wet.
Please make a test and print on your photo paper with the paper selection 'matte paper' instead, that setting uses the black ink.
You cannot switch directly to solvent inks, you can get into problems that the solvent damages plastic parts like tubing in your printer. You can switch to pigment inks - with other effects like bronzing and gloss differences between colors and colors and the paper, you may not like the look on glossy papers. The L1800 uses a dye black ink, that should fix your problem as well, but before you spend that money do a test as described above.

 

[Hope]

The L1800 is an A3 larger format printer - is that necessary ?

Yes, I need it to print A3 photo size
,booklets and magazine's cover page

Are you using the Epson inks - 664 ?

No, I use another brand dye ink
but results are same even when I use Epson 664 ink for Epson l382


Epson l382 use dye ink not pigment even black.


I follow your advice and I made the test on glossy paper using matte paper selection and the result is the paper not wet too much but the black color spot in my fingers

You cannot switch directly to solvent inks

https://arabic.alibaba.com/product-detail/eco-solvent-printer-a3--50036024783.html
I found this in Alibaba but I didn't find any reviews !!

You can switch to pigment inks

I don't want to lose my printer l382 but what if I modify it to pigment ink ?!?!
and if I like the result I will do it for Epson L1800 when I buy it ..


Thank you

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

No, I use another brand dye ink
but results are same even when I use Epson 664 ink for Epson l382

Please be careful with the inks, Epson is using dye inks in the L382 and several ET-Ecotank-models, and is using a pigment black in some other ET-models like the ET-2750, and 3rd party suppliers of such inks don't make a difference in all cases - they ship pigment inks because text prints look better with pigment inks on copy paper. Anyway - it would be strange otherwise why you get black stains on your finger, but not from the other colors - that can be an indication of a pigment black ink.
And you may have another issue - that the ink absorption of the paper you are using is limited, you may experiment with another paper as well.
Yes, you can get lots of stuff from China, as well eo-solvent conversion kits for some Epson printers, or
eco-solvent proof CISS assemblies etc, but you won't get any service in case of a problem.
If you have a local dealer, which sells you a eco-solvent Epson converted printer with warranty and support in case of problems you may buy such a printer. There are lots of plastic parts - the ink tanks, the tubing, the dampers in the printhead, the cleaning unit, the waste ink absorber, and it takes a while in some cases until the plastic gets dissolved, starts leaking etc, even the little foam insert in the cleaning unit can be affected.
You can use pigment inks in the L382 without a problem, the base model WF-2010W uses pigment Durabrite inks, you can make a test with such inks, but please be aware with the issues with the black ink, the Durabrite black ink is for matte surfaces only, not for glossy surfaces.
So you need to print with the matte paper setting if you use a matte pigment ink,and this ink easily wipes off glossy surfaces, or you use a glossy photo black from printers like the P600, that one may print well on glossy surfaces , as well with the matte paper setting. So if you use the matte black ink you need to use the glossy paper setting for glossy paper - which mixes the black with the other inks and may create ink puddles on the paper.

 

[Ubuki]

As an user of an L1800, I've had some issues with smearing and puddles of ink, but they are not related to the printer itself or the ink it comes with.

My first experience was with Kronaline Photo Glossy paper, the cheapest of the line I think, and it doesn't quite seem to absorb ink as much as it's expected to. I'm printing with the Gutenprint driver with Linux and setting the ink density to 0.8 was the right fix. The very dark areas looked a bit washed off and setting the GCR Transition Value from 0.3 to 0.5 fixed that as well (I just copied the setting from other types of paper).

So that may not help a lot. The L1800 is a great printer, but it didn't bring joy out of the box. I didn't get any good prints at first, not even with the official Epson drivers and Epson paper.

I bought a Colormunky and learnt to create custom profiles with Argyll. It prints beautifully now and I'm happy with it.