Epson L300

[Ink stained Fingers]

I got my Epson L300 a year ago as one of those CISS/integrated tank system printers, and installed it on March 14/2016. It is printing since then, mainly the internet - I didn't get very far yet with that job - and color patches last lear for fade tests reported in other threads.
The L300 made it up to 43 000 pages so far and is still printing without problems, most of it mixed text and images (the internet) and about 1500 full page images. The printer is running fine, without problems, just some photo papers don't feed well, and it needs a refill now and then. I'm using a mix of leftover dye inks from all those fade tests last year, and there is still plenty of ink available. The L300 does not have spectacular performance and is more of the install and forget type of equipment . Epson deliberately removed the borderless printing option vs. the WF-2010W base model which reduces photo printing options. The L300 is setup as a 4 ink dye ink printer , the glossy paper printing option uses the available black ink together with CMY which gives better blacks than mixed from the colors.

 

[thanhhuy123]

It's very interesting to know that such 4-color inkjet printer actually programmed to use black for photo printing on photo paper. Maybe that helps explain why Epson use all dye ink and not CMY dye + pigment Black as usual. Usually, I only see 4-color inkjet printer with Black as the pigment ink and not used when select Photo paper mode.

I actually once thought about pouring pigment Black for document printing, while still keeping CMY using Epson OEM dye ink for printing photo....

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

As I mentioned the L300 is based on the WF-2010W which is a pigment ink printer originally, the printhead should not be the problem. The L300 uses inserts at the cartridge locations in the printhead carriage which just give a small ink buffer and a very fine wire mesh filter to protect the nozzles against particles. It just could be that this filter is clogging up with time if you use the (wrong) pigment ink, but these inserts/dampers are available as spare parts easily. The L300 is running 4 dye inks, yes - the black ink as well is a dye ink.