Epson Drylab inks in L1800

[Smile]

It all depends on paper and your expectations, if I take quality paper like Canon Platinum Pro, then I can see difference between my Brother advertised nozzle size 2.5pl and my Canon 6700D 1pl droplet size, if magnified the difference is also very clear. While piezo head on brother places precise dots, the Canon light color droplets are so small it's hard to see them magnified many times.

Usually wide format printers nowadays are pigment, thats why EPSON have SC printers in the first place don't they? And the OP clearly stated that he wants to use DYE ink printer only. Pigment nozzles are usually about 4/5pl on Canons and I think we all agree the printout forum members made with BW using just black pigment cart is grainy.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

my Brother DCP-195C is specified with a 1.5pl printhead, with 4 colors . And the jobs are prints for photo books, and not specifically BW prints with Canons, it makes it all difficult to compare, without a magnifier, that's for testing but the typical viewer of a photo book won't use it. A typical photo printer will use light colors to dither the lighter and less saturated areas, it's not like dithering light grays with a black ink, those droplets are for sure more visible.

Let me add an update here , I printed a test target on plain paper, both with pigment inks,
http://www.druckerchannel.de/testdateien/dc_grafiktest.pdf
and scanned a small portion of it with high resolution - as if with a magnifier

the R265 printout


and the Pro 7600 printout


which are quite similar in resolution

 

[DryAxE]

Photo books are usually limited to A3 format, and square variations of them. Why wide format printer with huge picoliter sizes for such fine printing with DYE ink? You need something like 2pl nozzles max.

If you wan roll option and auto cutter you are limiting yourself because those are found only on wide format printers and they tend to be divided to CAD or photo types. CAD uses 4 inks and large nozzle size while photo ones have dozen inks (because they are pigment based) so those should be avoided.

Well, photobook of size 30x30cm needs 31x61 print to be made (extra cm is for final trimming), 24" printer with borderless is perfect. Roll paper is a great benefit since it can save you time and hassle. At the moment i work with ordinary printer and i have to cut the paper from rolls to exact dimensions, then decurl it and place sheet by sheet into printer while closely checking for every dust that could got onto paper. If book has 70 pages that means 35 prints and since those cheap printers are causing me horizontal banding i have to avoid high speed printing, each print takes about 30min (17,5 hours for whole book). Now do your math and add in account that i have to complete 20+ books in short time. Mission impossible and thats why i search for an upgrade. Curently leaning towards Epson 7890 with use of ciss and Ultrachrome D6 inks.

Both CAD/photo printers from Epson are pigment based and they have same droplet size and resolution. Seems like the only difference is number of colors? What about output? Is there anyone that has some experience with using dyes in wide format pigment printers? All i could see till now were some dye prints with SC-T3200 but on shitty paper with shitty 3rd party inks that were badly calibrated, hard to make a conclusion on that. Although prints had quite a lot of detail and no issues with print quality. With right papers and inks i believe they would work wonders.


Well i said i will report Ultrachrome D6-S inks with my L1800 printer. So far so good, i had to reprofile with colormunki and i already printed 5 books. Prints look very nice but i will be able to tell more when i can compare with my second L1800 that has original inks in it (i have to collect it from service, head was just replaced under warranty - i used only genuine inks). What i hope is that repaired L1800 will show no banding since i find that this is really hard if not impossible to achieve with those printers. Although this "micro" banding (horizontal) is barely visible it is still a big problem for me.

So in future weeks i will directly compare L1800 with genuine and L1800 with Ultrachrome D6-S inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you are addressing several issues above,

- banding , I'm not really clear about this effect, when is it visible, with one color only, in dark or light areas,
with a fixed distance or ???, could you please print and scan a sample showing the effect, and the nozzle check, just that, not a complete page with higher resolution, and a small portion of a print. It might be advisable to get the service manual, I don't know whether there is already a maintenance adjustment program available for this printer, this would tell you whether there are particular adjustments possible. I know there are for other Epson printers. One source could be 2manuals.com, and other sources.

- printer choice, I showed you above that the larger format printers can print with the same effective resolution as desktop printers. But with 4pl printers I definitely would choose a printer using light color inks. If a printer would dither a light cyan tone just with the regular (dark) cyan ink you would see , at close distance, some graininess, same you can see on photo prints with the Epson desktop printers using CMYK Durabrite inks more directed for office type printouts. Those models work with 3 or 4 pl droplets.

- I would not expect much visible difference between the L1800 and D6 inks, their main difference is longevity, stability. against UV and ozone influence for which the D6 inks should perform better. But you need to create profiles for these inks in combination with your papers. I would not give very much on sample printouts for which you don't know how they are created. You may look alternatively for ink cartridges used by the Fujifilm Drylab printers, DL600, DL400,410,430,450,very similar to the Epson Surelab series, there are ongoing offers on Ebay US for pretty steep discounted cartridges like this one
http://www.ebay.com/itm/FujiFilm-DL...ow-Set-of-4-/301449029177?hash=item462fc32639 or more
You may dilute the light colors yourself, that's not a problem , you are making your own profiles to correct any deviations, and you don't pay the full price for an ink diluted by the manufacturer.

- I have seen somewhere, by an American ink distributor, dye inksets offered for Epson large format printers, claiming to have the same colors as the original inks, thus no need for other profiles (as long as you print on Epson papers), and Epson was offering dye inks for the Pro 7600 as well.
One source here http://inkjetsolution.eu/en_US/c/For-Epson-78009800/39
or just for a black to print films http://americanscreensupply.com/index.php?l=product_list&c=66
and there are other offers for special sublimation inks which as well are a special type of dye ink, the dye with the sublimation properties, and there are more.

 

[websnail]

Well i said i will report Ultrachrome D6-S inks with my L1800 printer. So far so good...

Just out of interest, are you intending to play (or have you played) with any pigment inks in your L1800 or similar? I'm giving some serious thought to a testing session with an L800 here using something along those lines but I'm aware of the usual issues with pigment in dye printheads so worth finding out if someone else has already been there, done that.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

good question - I'm currently using, and this since quite a long time, pigment inks in an R265, the same inks I'm using in my Pro7600. That works without problem. The original WF-2010W, a small printer, is using the pigment Durabrite inks CMYK, and the L300 ist just this model with the Epson CISS. I used pigment inks on a L300 for a while, it worked, I only got problems when changing inks, some yellows react with each other and create flocks blocking the ink channels within the printhead, no cleaning could dissolve and remove them permanently. O.k., that didn't happen during the use of pigment inks, but when changing back to dye inks. I know that effect, I had it several times before, but just thought I can get away without flushing the yellow ink path.
The L800 is the P50 model with the Epson CISS, and the P50 was a direct successor of the R285 of the R265 (I don't know the corresponding American model names/numbers), they all have the same droplet size, number of inks and nozzles, and since that Epson prinheads don't really make a difference between dye and pigment inks I would not see a problem to use pigment inks on the L800. Other people switch from dye to pigment on the Epson 1400/1500W, and that's all the same hardware incl. the L1800 - A4 or A3 being the only difference - see another thread about pigment inks in the 1400. I'm not planning to switch to pigment inks on the L800 at this time, those print jobs will run on the R265.

 

[martin0reg]

Agreed - a p50/r285 or similar does print pigment, I have tried it years ago with the "Klaria" ink set from mikling with good results. These piezo head seem to print with all kind of ink, as long as it's flowing.
BUT.. if you don't use your converted printer daily, the problem is indeed the "flowing". Because pigment ink settles more than dye ink, especially matte black will build up a deposit very fast, the tubes might clog.
I don't know how epson avoids this in native pigment printers, pressurized carts in the bigger models, movements of the printhead which carries the carts in the smaller models, cleaning cycles, etc....
But I have to say that with an old R800 I have given up the pigment printing. It's truely a clogging monster, at least with the refillable carts I use. Just cleaned the purging pad and wiper blade, it was all smeared up like "tarred" with pigment. So I converted to dye, and this way the old and perhaps worn out machine will print flawless, even after some weeks of idle time.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you are addressing an issue which is not specific to an R285 or similar models printing with pigment inks, the clogging seems to be more pronounced with the matte black, I don't use that ink. I'm printing quite frequently, not every day, but probably about every week with the pigment R265 and do not have any significant cleaning needs over a long period. And it is correct that pigment inks leave some more residue over time at the cleaning system but nothing so far what really stopped me to print. And I cannot really see my inks settling in the bottles or the CISS so far. Epson advises, as I read it, to agitate resting cartridges once in a while - I think it was every 6 months or so, that is not really much. I was printing with cartridges several years old, and not knowing whether they were treated well. It may be somewhat different with particular 3rd party inks, I don't know.
Pressurized cartridges have another reason, the printhead speed has increased over time from one model to the next, and it is the ink in the tubes which is moved either in flow direction or against flow direction which creates a different hydrostatic pressure in the tubes, and to overcome this loss of pressure it is compensated with some pressure on the cartridge. This same effect occurs in models like the R2000 or R3000 when they are converted to a CISS system. Printing in draft mode apparently moves the printhead that fast that this loss of ink flow happens as well. And as always, once you start doing something different with your printer, CISS, other inks , refill cartridges etc you need to watch the situation carefully , Epson or whoever will not be responsible if something goes wrong or not as expected.
Pigment inks may show some of their typical problems like gloss issues or bronzing, and like always - as sonn as you use a non-standard ink you need to create a color profile for your ink/paper combination for a correct color representation

 

[Smile]

What i hope is that repaired L1800 will show no banding since i find that this is really hard if not impossible to achieve with those printers. Although this "micro" banding (horizontal) is barely visible it is still a big problem for me.

I'd hate to say this but all epson L series printers have micro banding problem, somewhat solvable with monitoring the ink dampers and making sure they are all evenly filled with ink. But I don't remember finding a way to solve this.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'd hate to say this but all epson L series printers have micro banding problem, somewhat solvable with monitoring the ink dampers and making sure they are all evenly filled with ink.

Microbanding - I'm running an L300 and an L800, and I'm not sure that I see that effect, either I don't have it or I'm overlooking it until now. Could you elaborate a little bit more on it, with a sample scan or something, and explain how that is related to the dampers. A typical user would not inspect the dampers unless he has a reason to do so.