Need advice for high volume A4 printing. Which printer to buy?

[irvweiner]

crexas, just a comment, if you choose a Canon printer the printheads are easily replaced-just like a cart. No need to throw the printer out. The OCP inks, as previously mentioned are fine inks, in the US I pay ~$13 per 16oz or 500ml for the dye ink use in my i9900.
I have an Epson R280 (dye ink using OCP also) setup for my wife. Runs darn fast on text, OK on color pix, cant recall the speed. There are several CIS available for this printer but the replacement of the printhead is not easy swap in/out job. Someone in the community may have better advice, I hope so.

Among the several vendors mentioned, I would add Inkjetcarts (http://www.inkjetcarts.us/support/), Ross Hardie has >30 yrs of sweat in this business and can surely help--he also ships worldwide.

good luck irv weiner

 

[l_d_allan]

No more confusing than ..... try wire gauges

True ... and your example of wire gauge is a good illustration. More to the point, f-stops are also tricky ... Open up your lens to a smaller number to let in more light and get less depth of field .... then close down your lens to a bigger number to let in less light for more DOF ... and you've lost half of your students.

and 2x4's aren't reallly finished to 2" x 4" . Sigh.

Oh, well, somehow I muddle through in spite of myself.

for the dye ink use in my i9900.

Don't mean to hijack the thread ... but ... Irv, do you no longer have your Pro 9000-2? Or do I have you confused with someone else?

and back on topic (barely) ... I think you ought to get an inkjet ...

 

[crexas]

I'm still not sure which printer I'm going to buy, thank you all for suggestions, I will review each one very thoroughly and later decide which one I'm going with. For the time being I have decided to kill my IP4700 line and move up to the new IP4850 because ip47 aren't manufactured anymore and it's getting harder and harder to find one in my city. Ordered a new ciss from cityinkexpress and a set of new inks from OCP and we'll see how it goes. It is still possible that my problem was only due to the ink I used. Maybe with new (good) ink my Canons won't clog so much and nozzles will live longer - meaning I (maybe) will be able to print on normal quality which is 2x faster than what I have to use now.

But I won't kill the plan to buy a better printer even if my Canons begin to behave themselves. I'm leaning towards the Canon pro9000 because I've used Canons all my life and have a much better experience in dealing with them than other brands. But as I've found out - Epsons are much more CISS friendly and have changeable waste ink trays. And that will make a tough decision.

To irvweiner: when my printhead dies I throw the whole printer away because I've called the official Canon service center in my city and they told me the price of a new printhead is not far from the price of the whole new printer itself. Besides mechanics wear out and sometimes begin to make some squeaking noises, waste ink pads begin to fill up giving errors on screen etc. I'm better off with a clean new printer. They don't cost a fortune so I think of them as a simple disposable item ofc that won't be the case with the new printer when I buy one (Epson or pro9000-2).

Btw I will let you guys know how it goes with new ink and IP4850. It could take a while tho. CISS and ink will take a week or two to get here

 

[The Hat]

crexas
The ip4850 is almost the same as the ip4700; just a cats whisker faster but you probably wont notice any difference in them at all.
All of the CISS, inks I have used came from cityinkexpress and they never gave me any bother at all.

Milklings thread #7 gave a good argument for you to switch to Epson printers as some of the ones he mentioned
would probably work better with the CISS and outperform the Canon printers in speed.
Something to think about anyway good luck with the 4850..

 

[crexas]

Yesterday ink, ciss and Canon IP4850 arrived. Ciss - city ink express, ink - octoink. It looks like these new Canon's carts are the same as IP4700, only chips changed. So I began setting everything up...

The ciss that I ordered had ink shipped separately so that I could start using octoink with a clean ciss. At first I did not rush to install the new ciss. I put in Canon carts, did some color tests, nozzle checks, printhead alignment. Everything looked great. Then I decided it was time to install ciss. And that's where my problems began.

I set up ciss without any problems. Everything looked fine - filled it with octoink, no flow problems, everything clean. Did two deep printhead cleaning cycles and printed my first nozzle check. It looked fine except pigment black had some clogging. I don't use it in my prints so I figured I'd leave it alone. Then I compared that nozzle check print to the one I made with original canon ink - nozzle checks don't mix colors so I could clearly see if there were any visible color differences between octoink and canon ink. And there were. Cyan had the same problem as my previous ink (ink-mate) - canon's cyan was more blueish and octo was more greenish. Canon's magenta was more red-ish than octo and yellow is a bit darker than canon's. Photo black also is a bit different. I understand that no 3rd party inks can match Canon's 100%, but I was very disappointed to see such visible difference. At first I hoped for 2 things from octoink - first being more accurate colors and second - not clogging the printhead. The first one disappointed me. I will contact them to see if they got any color profiles for their ink.

Then I decided to print some color tests and photos with octoink and compare them to the ones I made with canon's ink. After I printed 2 photos on my paper, magenta began to clog and I could clearly see the banding on my photos. Cleaned printhead a few more times - it helped a bit. But as soon as I start printing, magenta begins to clog and no matter how many cleaning cycles I do - it improves only temporarily, until the next print.

So I was disappointed in both ways which I hoped I would not. Colors differ from original inks, printhead clogs way too quickly... And I have no idea why. I bought a ciss that most of you would recommend (city ink express) and octoink that seemed to be a good choice. And I know my ciss setup is good. I have done a lot of those. But it just didn't meet my expectations... And compared to my old setup with old ciss, IP4700 and my old inks - the new one is even worse. I know - it hardly makes any sense. It should have worked

If I don't figure out that clogging problem I will have to get rid of octo ink, clean my ciss and go back to using my old ink. If clogging stops then I will still have that color difference problem but at least there is a way to fix that with custom profiles. I will scan and upload those test pages and nozzle checks a bit later so you can see what I was talking about.

Update: well it looks like my printhead is toast. There are 3 magenta lines printed during the nozzle check and the lightest one is too light, but has 2 stripes on top and bottom a bit darker (the whole line should be that way). I've flushed it 3 times with hot water, did more than 10 cleaning cycles, changed ink FotoRite that came with ciss in bottles, then changed carts back to OEM with original ink - nothing helped. I believe it could be electrical problems. Will try my luck tomorrow and hopefully get a new printhead or printer from the store that sold me that printer.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I bought a ciss that most of you would recommend (city ink express)...

Who recommended a ciss for a Canon printer?

Most of us would recommend that if you want to use a ciss, get an Epson printer. By far the advice on this forum is to not use a ciss on a Canon printer.

 

[crexas]

I bought a ciss that most of you would recommend (city ink express)...

Who recommended a ciss for a Canon printer?

Most of us would recommend that if you want to use a ciss, get an Epson printer. By far the advice on this forum is to not use a ciss on a Canon printer.

Yes I understand that. What I meant to say was that I was willing to buy CISS for Canon and the only thing I wasn't sure of was which one to get. I know it's bad (Canon+ciss). But never thought I could kill a printer in one day. I have already decided to go for Epson R2880+ciss in near future, but for now, for a couple of months I have to stick with these Canons.

 

[crexas]

So moving forward with my plan to buy a better printer (Epson R2880) I began to search for possible ink and ciss suppliers, sent some emails and got a very interesting and disappointing response from City Ink Express. They told me R2880 won't handle the load, which is 100-200 printed color pages every day. Something with paper feed and roller problems as soon as 6 months later. Just great... They told me Epson 4880 would be a better option. But the damn thing costs at least 1800$ !!! I know I wrote in my original post that I was looking for a printer no more than 2000$, but what I forgot is to convert my currency to dollars. So my real limit is 800-900$. So is this a dead end? Are there really no sub-1000$ inkjets on the market capable of providing good print quality AND quantity? I'm so confused right now.

 

[The Hat]

crexas
I wouldnt be put off by what cityexpress said about R2880 regarding paper feeding problems.
I used an Epson printer in past years and yes I got a few paper feed problems but no more than with any other printer.

That old printer went on for eight years to print some 25000 sheet with rattles, squeaks, howls, and growls
and was only replaced for cheaper ink and extra speed, so dont give up on the R2880 just yet..

 

[crexas]

And so almost half a year has passed and I ended up buying an Epson Photo P50 from inksystem.com with a ciss already installed. I thought that Epson R2880 would be a little bit too expensive for my first Epson printer. First I have to "get to know" them.

It has 6 colors CMYK,LM,LC and so far I've made about 500 color prints. Working very stable. No hiccups, no clogs, nothing. Everyday I make a nozzle check before starting my prints and so far I am more than happy with the results. If this printer manages to give me 4000 prints without too much trouble - then this printer will be considered as a real success to me.

When you buy a printer with ciss from inksystem they give you a 1 year warranty for the whole package so I figured it was a great deal for me because I get a warranty from someone who knows that I'm using a ciss with non original ink and isn't going to complain about it if something goes wrong with my printer and I need it fixed. I'm planning on using only their ink as it costs the same as my previous ink for Canons and it guarantees me that I will have a working printer for a whole year (I used to change my Canons every 2-3 months). Even if it breaks - they'll fix it.

Print quality - on best quality settings I cannot distinguish any quality difference between Canon IP4850 and Epson P50. They are both great. Normal quality is a little low for very small objects (like very small text).
Print speed - normal quality is faster than Canon. Takes less than 2 minutes for full A4 print, whereas Canon took ~2min. On best quality Canon is about 20secs faster. Epson prints full A4 in about 4min 20sec. But since normal quality is sufficient for most of my prints, it's a "win" situation.
Color output - it is better than what I had with my non-original ink Canon setups before. Blues and Greys are no longer so green-ish. But it is still far from perfect and I am planning on ordering a profiling service for my ink and paper.

BUT there is nothing perfect in this world. And I have 2 annoying problems with this Epson the first is that you cannot completely disable ink monitor as you can on Canon. If my print is made of mostly 1 color and it is quite saturated, I can make only about 20-25 prints before ink monitor tells me that I've run out of ink and need to reset the chips. Canon didn't have such a problem. And the second is that Epson does not finish the print before alerting about an empty cartridge. My Canons ALWAYS waited till the sheet is completed printing and only then they gave out an error. Epson stops in the middle of printing so I always waste a sheet of my photo paper when I have to reset the chips.

All in all I am very very very happy with this printer so far. Mainly because it doesn't clog as much as my previous Canons did. Actually it hasn't clogged yet at all. I really hope it stays that way until I make my 4000th print.

I am very thankful for all of you, who suggested using an Epson with a ciss instead of a Canon. You have saved me a lot of time, frustration and nerves. And probably money too