Canon Pro 10 v Epson R3000 thoughts

greg allen said:

I bought a Pro 10 on Ebay and had the exact same problems you did. I'd previously had a ip4700 that worked great for about five years before printing darker and darker wasting ink. I wanted to print larger format so did some research and settled on the Pro 10. Out of the box it printed so dark the images were unusable. I couldn't get a print profile to work for more than one image even if another image had the same values. Calibrating for every stinkin' image wasted a huge amount of ink even though my tests were 4"X6". With much effort I was able to put together one show of 15 images which paid for the miserable thing. After that I used it so sparingly I believe the heads clogged and I got an error code that said to take it to a Canon authorized service center or some such. The nearest one from where I live is about 110miles each way, and obviously a behemoth like that can't be shipped for much less than the price of a new one. I used it for a few months and now it's under my bed.

I know changing the head is easy but am I going to dump another $110 or whatever and get a different error code? It's such a piece of garbage even if it works again it wont work again correctly. Its been a couple of years so maybe I'll see what's out there but electronics seem to vary so much from one printer to the next of the same model. I'm even switching my photo gear from Canon to Sony as soon as the AR3 comes out as well. Canon screwed me

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Again something is wrong or the reason why the printer ended up on Ebay was because there was some fault in it.
If you had purchased a new one with warranty, Canon would have taken care of the problem and you would have a different state of mind today. I can attest that I have owned the Pro-10 for around 4 years now and not experienced any of the problems you encountered but mine came directly from Canon and was new.
Your statements certainly indicate that either you had a workflow issue or was not using OEM ink not a good quality inkset. It certainly sounds like you were using ink that were aftermarket and the aftermarket ink seller had put in black ink into the grey cartridge and the problems you experienced is exactly what would have happened. I have a hunch you were using aftermarket ink with the Pro-10. Were you?
The other thing is that the Pro-10 when used with proper inks is not a clogger. Using Epson type inks in it would GUARANTEE clogging.

Toolman Jose Rodriguez, a regular contributor here has done a lot of work on the Pro-10 as well as the Pro-1 as well as taken a tremendous amount of time testing and showing viewers what refilling is all about at a level of quality we only dreamed about years ago. Both from technique and tools perspective. Many of his videos incorporate over 20 combined years of refilling knowledge that allows the viewer to quickly ramp up to what he is achieving.

You might want to look up his Youtube channel. He guides you through everything necessary that allows refilling and get results at a professional level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ1lcPAMEY4&t=1016s

WilsonLaidlaw said:

I bought the Canon Pixma Pro 1 in the UK. What a total heap of junk, that I wish I had never encountered. It has a built in problem on head cleaning and unless you are using it constantly, it wastes far more ink than it uses in actual printing. Nearly every time I come to use it,

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Wow, another Pro 1 disgruntle owner that can’t get the printer to perform the way they want it too, and also expects it not to run maintenance cycles when left standing and unused.

To get the best out of the Pro 1 when starting off, you need to let the printer handle everything except Media settings, and even then, these need to be picked carefully, this printer is intelligent and will override your setting when they are incorrect.

When you have become accustom to the printers’ unique requirements then you can apply your own setting very carefully and it will produce the most stunning quality that any printer could ever produce.

This machine is not designed to do 4 x 6 photo shots, but it can handle them when set up properly...

greg allen said:

Out of the box it printed so dark the images were unusable. I couldn't get a print profile to work for more than one image even if another image had the same values. Calibrating for every stinkin' image wasted a huge amount of ink even though my tests were 4"X6".

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The pro 10 is the baby sister to the Pro 1, it’s so much easier to get the best out of this printer without any practical experience whatsoever, when you follow the instructions.
Out of the box it just works perfectly IF, you let the printer handle the print setting itself, until you become accustom to them, when you change setting that you don’t understand, then inevitability you’ll end up with poor results.

If you have a problem with a printer, it’s mostly down to some intervention on your part that caused the problem in the first place, again these printers just don’t clog when used regularly, they are the best Canon models produced to date.

What’s the point in changing your camera to a Sony when you can’t print a decent photo from a perfectly good printer, regardless of brand name...
P.S. Sony don’t make Photo printers I’m afraid...

Paul Edmunds said:

Hi. My wife and I run a successful photographic tuition business in France. Part of our guests 'package' are 4 A3+ prints of their best work printed on Bockingford Watercolour 190gsm. To start, our office printer for general work is a Epson R300 still going strong after 15 years! On the strength of this an R3000 was purchased for the photographic work, it lasted 18 months! The 2nd R3000 has also lasted just over 18 months, both general medium frequent use, they are now in the back of the car ready for the tip" the fault, clogged heads that failed to respond to a whole array of cleaning methods and solutions! To top this both had to be constantly coaxed into feeding the Bockinford 190gsm. So... we now have a Canon Pixma Pro 10s, early performance is looking good, every sheet has fed with no problems and the print quality is as good as the Epson in my opinion, and it appeares to be better built and conveys more 'confidence'. Time will tell, so far so good! I'm using Octoinks by the way.

I'd be interested to hear other members thoughts.

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I would tend to suspect that you might have ended up using the "much called for by previous Epson owners" feature of the built in black switching. Let me elaborate, on prior generations many owners whined about having the need to switch blacks. So Epson built in an autoswitching mechanism that is a mechanical switching valve that essentially switches the ink fed to the same black channel on the printhead. So more more manual removal of the black cartridge and reinstalling of the other black cartridge which many users would misplace as well. So problem solved. Yes.
Except that this switching valve tends to wear out fairly quickly when used.
This problem has also plagued the 3800, 3880, 3000. It is too soon to tell if the P600 and P800 has the same/similar weak valve. If it is the black channel that appeared clogged then this likely was the problem. You would have been better off by using two R3000s each one dedicated to one type of black ink.

Every real photo printer built and sold today is fairly decent and they all have their weaknesses and strengths. Unfortunately, if its intended use fell squarely on one of the weak points then it will be shown to be very lacking. Thus it is important to understand the pros and cons of the model and suitability to intended use.

The R300 is a workhorse of a printer (trucklike) and similar printers are NO LONGER MADE. The R300 came from a period when Epson had a lifetime guarantee on the printhead. There is no such warranty anymore and Epson printheads are no longer as robust BUT the newer printheads do print better and there are a lot more nozzles. So again, you get something but you gotta give somewhere.

Paul Edmunds said:

Both R3000's suffered from severe head clogging, when a head clean was initiated it only made matters worse. The printer table was perfectly flat, but ink seemed to collect on the far left of the carriage and congealed. I think this was the cause of the contamination? Infact when the second R3000 was removed the rear left foot was sitting in a pool of ink! Both R3000's are totally dead after being flung into a very deep council recycling tip! It did feel good though!

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The collection of ink on the left side of the carriage is a "normal" thing experienced by Epson pigment ink machines. When I was purchasing used R800s, 1800s and 2400s that was "normal" for a well used machine. One of the maintenance routines of the printer is to spit out ink on the left side. On the right side, this spitting is done into the purge station and there is a pump that would take the ink away but on the left side, all there is is an absorbent pad that wicks directly to the larger waste ink pad below. I believe on the larger wide format printers, there is also a similar collection area that is maintained but DO NOT QUOTE on that because my memory of this is scant. However, on pigment ink machines, this aspect is actually one of the required maintenance things to do by knowledgeable owners....gained from experience.
On used machines that I would purchase, I would dissolve the congealed ink mound with windex and at the same time using a tool similar to what dentists use " when they call for SUCTION to their assistant" suck up the dissolved congealed ink. This same process was also applied to overspray areas from printing borderless.

On your prior R300, it also used the same spit process as well on the left but being dye ink, it would hardly have any build up of resin and pigment because it is a "dye" ink printer.

As a result comparing the two machines and using one as a yardstick towards the other is not meaningful. All pigment ink printers will suffer some kind of deposit issue over time because of the nature of the ink they are using.

It appears that the work you are performing might actually call for a 17" commercial grade wide format model and not a consumer level R3000. There are times I would try and talk an amateur out of acquiring these commercial machines BUT there are times when they ARE needed. I believe this is one of those.
In any case, good luck with the Pro-10 but in the back of my mind, I think this Pro-10 is also being misapplied. The experience will be interesting.

Further to this, I once inherited long time ago an old HP desktop that used the HP45 cartridges that was pigment ink. Guess what, that machine spat ink out into a collection spot that was hardly a pad. It was a glob of black congealed mess. Obviously HP did not think that printer was to be used that much but those large HP45 cartridges were GREAT. I washed out this mess with dishwasher detergent, drained and dried out the printer and it was good again. There was no waste ink needs servicing routine...etc.

I was a little bemused by the "Sadly" typo back there but glad to clear that one up...

As to coming for food... That's all fine and we'd welcome a visit (with forewarning) but my cooking extends to a decent Roast dinner (with the most amazing Yorkshire puddings & gravy) but the children and small dining table may make for a less than ideal dining experience... Worth a 600+ mile trip? I think not ... But hey!

Anyway... Appreciate the various votes of confidence and quite a lot already covered but with regard to the now "satisfyingly" "retired" R3000 machines... a few additional pointers:

Paul Edmunds said:

Both R3000's suffered from severe head clogging, when a head clean was initiated it only made matters worse. The printer table was perfectly flat, but ink seemed to collect on the far left of the carriage and congealed. I think this was the cause of the contamination? In fact when the second R3000 was removed the rear left foot was sitting in a pool of ink! Both R3000's are totally dead after being flung into a very deep council recycling tip! It did feel good though!

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1. The weakness in the ink channel swapping system for the Photo and Matt black inks has now been pretty well documented on various forums so it can cause all manner of apparent clog like symptoms. However it's not always the problem
   
   
2. Choice of inks can definitely have an impact and I'm aware that we had a period when one manufacturer was churning out Yellow and Cyan inks that were clumping so badly that they only way to remove the clog was to reverse flush the ink so it came out the inlet receivers in the printhead. Not a simple task but very satisfying as much because we discovered the flush technique by accident..
   
   
3. One other key thing is that, like any other CIS equipped printer, problems don't tend to appear until a problem involving new inks/supply/etc... have been installed for some time. Putting in a new batch of ink, for example, often doesn't immediately show issues until the new ink has made its way to the printhead some days/weeks/months later (depending on your usage) so it's not immediately obvious as to cause.

Most of the issues we've seen have been either the black channel weak-point or ink quality but resolving can be a ball-ache... Standing advice this end has been to fix the black channel so it's manually set to one channel or the other, then cut the motor wire to the gear switch. Grab a bargain with the same fault from eBay and do the reverse on that one and then you have dedicated Matt black and Photo Black media printers without the hassle... Assuming of course you then have a decent ink

websnail said:

As to coming for food...

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As charming as a can of SpaghettiOs with you sounds, I would never impose a guest at your dinner table.

Glad to see you posting. Was just wondering what was happening with you.

stratman said:

As charming as a can of SpaghettiOs with you sounds, I would never impose a guest at your dinner table.

Glad to see you posting. Was just wondering what was happening with you.

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Well, you see there were two amazing nights of joy, intimacy and fun about 6 years apart...

...it's just that there was a teensy, weeny thing in the small print about "consequences" that I've been wrestling with ever since ...

Wouldn't change them for the world though...

websnail said:

Wouldn't change them for the world though...

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I can see a new Avatar coming out of this...
Nice one Webby...