Am I defecting to Canon ?

[Ink stained Fingers]

Some of these Chinese maint. boxes didn't give contact originally - there are apparently some mech. tolerances; I tested them when they arrived and wiggled them around a bit, some need a piece of folded paper pushed into a small gap between the cart and the printer case. It's easy to claim warranty with Aliexpress - at least in Germany - but this was not necessary in this case.
ColorMunki - that's a good step, you should get decent profiles with it.

 

[lemons]

Well the printer came and first impressions are good. I think it's a whole lot of kit for £550! Ordered a replacement maintenance box straight away, it was about the same price on Amazon as on AliExpress. As you warned, it was nearly full after installing the cartridges.

Apart from that, the setup was absolutely painless. The touchscreen is a decent size, responsive and logical. Network connection was straightforward and has remained solid. My first few test prints on Sihl Ivorycolor 210g matt paper look decent, though I need to get my hands on a colormunki and get it profiled.

I'm still a bit miffed about the matt black situation. I may order some chips and have a go at refilling the black cartridge when it's empty. Can you recommend an ink I can buy that will serve for both glossy and matt prints? I'm sticking to OEM cartridges for now for the other colours, but if refilling the black is tolerable, I might consider doing the other colours too.

I didn't intend to hijack this thread, should I start a new one?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's nice to hear from you that the printer arrived and you got it installed and working. The printer just comes with the T40Cx cartridges - the small ones with 25 ml - or even less as start up cartridges.
I don't know if I mentioned it before - there is an optional simple paper tray available to catch the sheets from the sheet feeder

https://robot.epson.eu/de/products/options/optional-cut-sheet-output-stacker-tray-c12c936361

(Such tray does not exist for the Canon TC-20).

I got some longer time ago the Canon photo black PFI-304 ink out of an expired cartridge which works pretty well on both paper types - matte and glossy. Or the black ink of the Canon TC-20 - the PFI-050 is used by the driver both for matte and glossy papers which could be another option. And octoink.co.uk should be able to deliver you Epson compatible black inks as well. Just don't use the InkTec pigment photo black which creates a pretty visible metallic sheen, but it's overall difficult to recommend a pigment photo black ink, you always need to see how such ink is printing on your papers, it may look good. with low bronzing, good blacklevel , but looks disappointing on another paper . Inks for use on the Epson printers P600, 700, P900 should do the job on the T2100 as well. I'm currently using a photo black ink which is a mix of lots of ink samples from the days I was using a P400. But be aware - the T2100 is an entry level printer and does not run with 10 inks.

I didn't intend to hijack this thread, should I start a new one?

No, we are talking about the same new printer which we installed.

 

[palombian]

I use the Canon large format Lucia BK without problems in my Maxify.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm doing refill on my T2100 and use original Epson cartridges for it, I had leakage problems at the ink outlet with a 3rd party cart. But it is not easy to identify the right place where to drill a hole into the cart, I removed a pretty strong foil from one side of the cart and got this:

There is a pretty complex structure inside - lots of chambers for the ink, the circular element on the left is the
Epson typical membrane valve which opens only when ink is pulled from the printhead at the outlet. 3rd party carts don't have such valve. When you look to the other side you see lots of small channels for ink and air, and this shows a problem when you try to refill such cart - the chambers are connected only via small holes in the separating walls so it takes while until you get ink into all of them - or not at all - ink-in and air-out does not work at the same time. I had already the assumption that I won't get the nominal ink volume inside via a hole I drilled exactly at the middle on the top and through to the bottom. Some rolling and shaking and waiting till next day made room for some more ink.

Knowling this makes it just easy to fill up the carts after some use - whenever the color bars in the status monitor reach the bottom and the !-sign comes up or a little bit earlier.

It is apparent that such cartdriges are not designed for refill by Epson, and they are filled with an adapter in the factory using some vacuum/underpressure to get the ink quickly into all chambers as needed.

 

[lemons]

That's great to know. I suppose the printer has been out for some time, and is mostly used by businesses, so it's unlikely that demand will be high enough for refillable cartridges to be improved.

You mentioned before that the chips get registered to stop them being reused.. do you know if they get registered with just the printer or with Epson, so that no other printers can reuse the chips?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

so that no other printers can reuse the chips?

There is no resetter available at this time so a reuse of the chips is not possible, but yes - the reuse - accidentally - of a serial number is principally possible - the interface is just active between the chip on the cartridge and the printer - the computer can be offline all the time. It is overall a very similar approach Epson is using on the P900 printer and making refill difficult. There is an adapterboard available which emulates the chip functionality and the carts can be used w/o chip. You buy that adapterboard together with a fixed number - e.g. 30 - of serialnumbers per color. And the same serial numbers could effectively be used as well on another adapterboard running on another printer.

I discovered some interesting detail about the T3170 which is the T3100 for the american market, somebody claims to have modified the T3170 printer firmware to make it chipless - to deactivate the chip registration alltogether, but that project is just at the engineering level - you would reprogram the firmware by taking out the memory chip and reprogram it with this chipless software, so you would need to that with a chip programmer.

https://camosystemsreset.com/tienda/bin-chipless-chip-virtual-epson-plotter-t3170/


so yes - there is apparently user interest for such modification but that company resides in Peru and I'm not going to send the control board of my printer there for this patch, and I'm currently running a T2100, not the T3100.

 

[lemons]

so yes - there is apparently user interest for such modification but that company resides in Peru and I'm not going to send the control board of my printer there for this patch, and I'm currently running a T2100, not the T3100.

Interesting. Perhaps in the fullness of time other options will become available. I think my approach going forward for now will be to carry on using my ip8750 for casual photo prints on photo media, and restrict use of the T2100 to mostly art prints on matt media. I seldom need or want to print photographs at A3 or above so this isn't a problem for me.

To satisfy my curiosity, I experimented with some printer test images on Ilford Pearl paper using the T2100, first with the semi-gloss paper setting, and then the enhanced matt setting. The semi-gloss profile without black ink was surprisingly passable. Not to repeat what has already been observed, but with careful selection of the image (without prominent areas of black detail) I think most users would be more than satisfied. Using the matt profile, I found that the black ink dried on the page within a few seconds of the print completing. As I was warned however, the gloss differential makes the prints unusable. I gave it a quick application of satin fixative, which made an improvement but does not present a sustainable solution.

Most surprisingly, I found that black and white prints using the semi-gloss profile (without black ink) can come out looking great (to my eye). The same caveat applies, it needs to be a light image overall otherwise the blacks are crushed, and the tint becomes too apparent in areas of solid black. I experimentally mounted and framed a small 6"x6" b&w print, and the very slight colour cast looks more like an artistic choice than a printing limitation.

I've just today got my hands on an i1 Studio so tonight I'll set about profiling with the paper I have loaded in the T2100 which is the inexpensive Xativa X-Press Matt Coated Premium Paper 230g/m². I'll also run it over the Ilford Pearl and see how it affects my earlier test prints!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

A chipless printer is effectively a tank system printer - Mega - or Eco- - with the firmware just bypassing the subroutines handling the chips in a 'normal' printer - and not having the Ecotank tubing installed. So it could very well be that this company in Peru - a programmer there - is just doing such patches to the firmware.

You are doing the right thing to test the printer with different papers and driver settings and inks to find the best combination for your intentions. Bronzing etc is a typical problem with pigment inks and glossy papers - specifically with 3rd party material - it is not a T2100 problem . And it's fine, if the CMY 3 color mode on glossy paper is o.k. for you , some inksets rather well mix together to a pretty neutral black - or not - you need to find out with a test. You may use typical hairspray - the standard strength - and apply it rather smooth over the print, but you'll find differences how fine nozzles spray between different brands. It can do a pretty good job, I tested that longer time ago with the chroma/gloss optimizer of the P400, and as well with hairspray, they all improve the glossy look, eliminate bronzing and gloss differences - and even increase the overall gamut - of the colors and the black. But you need to create the profile after you hairsprayed your target sheet and let it dry overnight.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm a kind of puzzled that several of my recent printers didn't stay that long with me - the Canon TC20 went to a friend of mine, and the Epson T2100 found a new home at my son. Both are interested to have the print capability for larger formats now and then , I explained in detail the functionality and the limits of these printers which they accept. I'm going for an Epson T3100x - the Megatank version - but there is for some reason a shortage on the German market - lots of dealers dealers post availability of 3 days to 2 weeks - but by calling them up a delivery after Christmas is more realistic. It appears to be practice by various companies to post a 3 day delivery time, and confirm 3 weeks or more once the order is confirmed. And there are some companies posting prices of 100 - 200€ above the recommended Epson price. There must be something special with this model.