New Epson ET-18100 (L18050) printer installation

[pharmacist]

I have bought an Epson ET-18100 (L18050) printer, mainly for the PVC ID card printing capabilities and the CcMmYK 6-color printing engine, similar to previous Epson 1500W A3+ printer that only used tiny cartridges and did not had a user removable waste ink tank (I used a Printer Potty to redirect the waste ink during cleaning cycles into this external container).

To generate a PVC ID card target I had to download a PSD template and pasted my targets on this template.....The first try was not a succes: too much ink (pooling) was laid onto those PVC ide cards, so I have to reduce ink intensity with -20%. So printing wit color management: OFF to print the targets.....

 

[donaldolsen]

This is actually fairly normal for PVC cards as ink doesn't absorb the way it would into paper. You're on the right track by reducing ink density and turning off color management.
You can also get much better results id you use a slower print mode and allow for more drying time between the passes.

 

[pharmacist]

The effect of the profile:

Before the profile I used the standard color management by the printer itself using the ink density setting -20% to prevent pooling so to have good comparison with the profile corrected print also using a ink density setting of -20%:

left print: print with dedicated 252 patch target (i1Profiler generated profile)
right print: color management by the printer itself (internal color correction by the printer driver itself)

As my smartphone does deform the colors and contrast, I also have made a scan on my profiled Epson ET-8550 printer, so the colors are much more accurate:

You can now clearly see the advantage of this dedicated Epson ET-18100 PVC-ID card profile. Instead of a dull and washed out print without color management, the profile corrected print on the PVC card is vivid and without a color cast in the greys.