Epson XP 15000: A3+ printer with user replaceable waste ink tank

[pharmacist]

Why did Epson not install a user replaceable waste ink tank in their other printers like the Epson 1500W/1430, R2000, R3000, P400 and P600 printers ??? And this dye printer with probably the same print head like the Epson 1500W/1430 omits the light colours, which make totally sense as the minimum droplet size is 1.5 pl and having the light colours replaced by gray and red, ensuring greater gamut and also neutral ABW printing. If they would make an ECO-version of this printer, that would be great, because most ECO printers do not have a user replaceable waste ink tank. Thinking about the ink configuration, my wish for ommiting the light colours (LC, LVM, LLB)in n the P600 in favour for red and gloss optimizer, thus freeing one channel so both MB and PK are loaded at the same time (no more wasteful ink swaps when changing media type), is totally feasible making an hybrid P400/P600 printer with a built-in user replaceable waste ink tank, regarding the ink configuration of the XP 15000 and it's user replaceable waste ink tank.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't know if Epson ever asked you about your printer dream configuration - they never asked me, and I don't know how they get an understanding what the user community is going for . The user replaceable waste ink tank is definitely not a technology challenge, but look how many Canon printers come with it - which is overall a kind of contrary to laser printers - about every laser printer has a user replaceable waste toner bottle.
Red ink - I tested the gamut for the R800 , as well the P400 with the genuine red inks compared to a mix of magenta and yellow - you are gaining less than you might expect , and you need images which actually carry these saturated reds at the edge of the gamut. If you want the max gamut you would not just need red, but as well green, blue, violett, just look to the inksets of the currently leading printers - Epson P5000 and up or Canon P1000 and up which promise you the 98% or 99% ...... Adobe RGB coverage. And if you go for 3rd party inks the situation is different again, you cannot expect such inks to cover the same gamut as the genuine OEM inks - with or w/o a specific red. And you know that a typical 3rd party ink user would use as well 3rd party papers which give you another gamut as well, so it is overall a rather tricky situation.
It is a discussion since 15+ years whether 1-1.5 pl droplets would let you print good enough without light inks, or whether there is still a visible gain from printing with light inks. Just compare the P400 and P600 , both pretty much the same hardware and with 1.5pl droplets , but with very different inksets. If you would run a P400 with a RIP you could substitute the GO and run that nozzle row with a gray ink instead so there are lots of theoretical options.
And don't forget that there is on top of all that some secret sauce - the firmware controlling the output, the actual droplet sizes used, the tuning of the output more for speed or highest quality, smoothest transitions etc. You can see that if you use some alternative software like Turboprint, it lets you enable some combinations of paper, quality, dpi settings which are not available via the regular driver.

 

[mikling]

Color theory assumes or ignores the reality of the number of physical droplets and the real number of patterns that the printer can put down. This aspect has been completely ignored by reviewers. Given that the printer can only lay down so many different patterns per color and only so many colors, the engineer must then pick what compromises are acceptable and then design.
Also remember the Deltas that we humans are sensitive to varies by color. So there are certain colors we can distinguish very small deltas and that makes us sensitive to those colors. Grey is one of them. So you can chase theoretical gamut and give up physical linearity as opposed to accept some gamut restrictions but gain linearity and real color resolution. Hence why multiple blacks was used in the K3 printers meant for the higher quality images as opposed to something like the P400, R2000 etc meant to chase gamut to generate graphic and more vivid images. The K3 user is likely more a B&W printing person than a P400 user. It is beyond droplet size today and the thought of droplet size is actually incorrect in today's world. Epson must do it because they use larger as well as smaller size to gain print speed and retain some resolution...again design compromises.
Take for example the contrast of a Pro-100 versus Pro9000. The 9000 has a smaller droplet size and the Pro-100 has a substantially larger ( dinosaur like 3pl ) droplet size and only ONE size to boot. The 9000 has a droplet size of 2pl versus the 100 of 3pl. Yet the output on a 9000 is grainier than the output of the 100 which grain free to the naked eye. Notice that feature of the Pro-100 called OIG. This feature is really the aspect that they can leverage much more powerful processors and memory and also gain more more dot control patterns. Using something like OIG Optimum Image Generation as a feature sounds better marketing wise than saying improved microcontroller and more dot channels and increased memory which really sounds like nothing to the artist.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Also remember the Deltas that we humans are sensitive to varies by color. So there are certain colors we can distinguish very small deltas and that makes us sensitive to those colors. Grey is one of them.

You may have a look to this plot - smaller ellipsoids indicate a higher sensitivity to color changes

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/aging-printers-and-icc-profiles.11074/#post-92889

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It is beyond droplet size today and the thought of droplet size is actually incorrect in today's world.

I made some tests some time ago comparing the L800 output with the L300 - 1.5pl vs. 3.5pl printers

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/effective-print-output-resolution.10964/#post-91985

You barely can distinguish the prints; this is just one of several other tests possible to compare such printers, you might look as well to the homogenity of monochrome color areas which I did not do in this test. And there are several other reasons why one model is more suitable for photo printing - borderless printing - the L300 did not - the L800 uses many more nozzles and prints faster than the L300 - the paper handling for thicker paper is better with the L800 than on the L300. You may even think that the L800 driver does not use the smallest 1.5 pl droplets for solid RGB colors but only for lighter colors.
And keep in mind - it may look different with other printers, my old Pro 7600 with 4pl droplets looks slightly more coarse than these printouts - and even more if I go to a higher print speed . You just don't need this resolution if you print with a lower dpi in the first place.