EPSON Ecotank monochrome inkjet printers for B/W artworks ?

[BlackWhite]

Hello everyone,

Does anyone had a try with printing black & white artworks with EPSON's Ecotank monochrome inkjet M series (M1140, M2140, M2170 ...etc.)

These were intended as an alternative to laser printers, for texts and graphics/charts.
I'm wondering if they can do a good job for high quality black and white artworks.
Precisely for these aspects:
- sharpness of lines/edges (especially on matte paper)
- uniformity of black areas
- "deepness" of EPSON's black ink on matte paper (for reference, the printer is sold with the ink bottle C13T03P14A)

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I wouldn't expect any difference to printers with about the same nozzle size - 2.8pl - just the nozzle rows for the colors are missing, and the driver is tuned for office type applications.

The black level of the ink can only be viewed in combination with particular papers

 

[BlackWhite]

Hi everyone,
Here again for some news.

I had the opportunity to perform tests with the model Ecotank M2140.
I printed on matte paper (150 gr) + EPSON original ink (pigment ink - Ref. 110).

The quality is definitely there: sharp lines, deep blacks and unifom black areas.
What remains is the presence of "pizza wheel" marks (see picture). If someone can help I would appreciate.

First I tried different options in order to have a good ink density (not overload the paper) and the least wheel marks.
Here's the configuration with the best quality so far:

1) Paper source: rear paper feed slot

2) On the driver software menu:
- Paper type: Thick paper
- Quality: High
- Quiet mode: ON
- High speed: OFF
- Printer density: 0% (cannot diminish this one, which indeed reduces the problem, but I need deep plain blacks)

3) On the printer's LCD screen:
Settings -> Printer Setup -> Ink Drying time = Longer


With these options I eliminated the little white pizza wheel marks that plagued the black areas of the print.
What is left is the black dots in white areas which I think is caused by the ink not having sufficient time to dry before touching the wheels.

Is there a way to further slow down the printing speed ?
Or an alternative solution ?

Thanks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You are using the printer in a way which is not the normal operating mode - printing office stuff - text - with a rather low level of ink coverage. You are right with your observations that the ink on the paper surface is not dried off yet when the paper moves out of the printer. The spikes of the pizza wheels poke minute holes into the still wet surface.

I only see one option - to do more tests - even exchanging the matte ink with a photo glossy ink which adheres much better to a coated glossy/semiglossy surface than a matte ink. But the effect of pizza wheel marks is still there on glossy papers - in a number of cases - when you run glossy paper on a pigment ink printer with a photo black, but there are papers which do not exhibit these problems . I would advise a test with such coated papers - major paper manufacturers offer sample packs of their assortment or parts of it - and there are as well coated matte papers - or you can use as well semimatte/silk type papers -

 

[Smile]

You have choose another paper or hack the printer and mechanically reduce wheel pressure of the pica wheels.