Pigment printers for Giclee printing

[pixelhero]

Hi all,

My wife is looking to invest in her art prints a bit more and we are looking at getting our own printer to do the job.

Typical Giclee printing at A3 is around £20-30 per sheet from a printers. Which is quite a cost when her work is not yet for sale anywhere.

Looking around I see A3+ printers which have OEM pigment ink and are designed to use pigment ink come in at anywhere from £300 - £1000 (yes they go higher, but not interested in anything above there).

Does anyone have any recommendations? Im not sure there is a wide choice, it looks like Epson SureColor vs Canon Pixma Pro series - is that it? We live in the UK so typically have less choice.

What 2nd hand options are there / older models? I've seen the Stylus Photo 'R' series - are these pigment printers?

Our general assumption is that to print off 100 A3 prints would cost Printer + £150 for paper + Ink. Which would be less than the £3,000 to get it printed in a print shop. If she starts selling more than 100 prints a year we would just get it professionally done to save time.

How many A3 prints can be done on a single set of the K3 inks in the Epsons? We'd be talking about 70% cover of A3 (never full colour pages) in pretty low levels of detail - 'street art' style art prints.

It won't be used for printing photos. It will simply be for digitally created art prints (or photographed drawings, which will be digitally edited).

To class the art as Giclee/Fine Art we understand we need to use pigment inks and archival/fine art papers.

Once she gets more regular sales at higher prices we can justify the cost of £30 a time to get them done on a much better machine.


Just looking for a bit of advice or piece of mind about investing in something

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you may look up test reports for the Epson P400, or P600 or Canon Pro-10s which are all pigment ink printers for the A3+ format. Pricing varies between countries quite a lot. They differ somewhat in functionality e.g. variation range of paper sizes or roll paper printing with the Epson models or in the general paper handling and printing speed. Epson printers are more widely supported by refill options, inks and cartridges which may have a significant cost impact on your printouts. You can assume for some rough calculations that an A4 format image print needs about 1ml of ink - all colors together, but cartridges run empty independently of each other so that you may be able to print 30 prints in one go and would have to fiddle with inks and cartridges every other sheet or after 2 or 3 or 5 sheets another time. Papers are the other significant cost element - there are plenty shops and papers on the market, and that depends as well of your country of residence.

 

[The Hat]

@pixelhero, home inkjet printing is never cheap but its far cheaper than getting your work printed in the market place.

You should invest in an A3 pigment printer for the type of work you want to do, the initial purchase costs can seem expensive but after that you can control your own costs and manage your day to day printing easier, as recommended an Epson or Canon Printer will work just fine.

You can of course use OEM ink, but if you feel that it works out to expensive then you can switch to 3rd party inks, which has much the same longevity as the OEM’s

The most expensive part of fine Art printing is the paper and here there can be no compromising, it must be good quality otherwise you’ll get very poor feedback which will eventually ruin your business

Here is a list of some of the best papers to use:

Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gs, Epson Water Resistant Matt Canvas

Hahnemühle Torchon 285gsm, Fujifilm Photo Paper Pearl

Fujifilm Photo Paper Satin, Somerset Velvet Paper for Epson 255gsm

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I would not recommend to look for used or converted printers in your case e.g. running a 1500W with pigment inks, and I have not seen previous models like the R2000 or Pro-10 in new condition with an really attractive discount as a starter package. You are planning to use the printer for business.

 

[RogerB]

Hi all,

Typical Giclee printing at A3 is around £20-30 per sheet from a printers. Which is quite a cost when her work is not yet for sale anywhere.

I think you must be looking in the wrong place for your prints. There's lots of competition in this market and you should be able to get a very good quality A3, on fine art paper for a price of £8 or less, with discounts for multiple prints. Of course, doing your own printing has its attractions but if printing is not your core skill you may be better off finding a reliable specialist printer. You can get a small number of prints to test the market without any major investment.

I also think you need to look again at your costing for printing yourself. If you use a printer like the Epson P800 with 80ml cartridges your ink cost for an A3 print will be about £1 (2ml) and a typical fine art paper will be £2 per sheet. A printer with smaller cartridges can double that ink cost.

This may not be a politically correct view for an enthusiast printing forum, but be realistic when it's business.

 

[pixelhero]

Thanks for the help. Cheapest A3 print I can find is £14 now. If you know one thats closer to £8, would be great!

Was hoping to find a cheaper option, but I think a P400 or the Canon Pro-100 (I think the Pro-10 is only pigment black??)

Thanks for the help

 

[The Hat]

Thanks for the help. Cheapest A3 print I can find is £14 now. If you know one thats closer to £8, would be great!

Was hoping to find a cheaper option, but I think a P400 or the Canon Pro-100 (I think the Pro-10 is only pigment black??)

Thanks for the help

@pixelhero, pigment ink is what you should be looking for in a printer, and a Pro 10 doesn’t come cheap..

 

[palombian]

With some assistance from knowledgeable people you could buy a second hand PRO9500 Mk II.
There are still a lot of them in Holland (barely used).

Ask for a nozzle check to be sure the printhead is OK.
And let remove the printhead and block the carriage before shipping .

http://www.marktplaats.nl/a/compute...51fa109c354bbabe740c1b&previousPage=lr&pos=10

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

(I think the Pro-10 is only pigment black??)

No, the Pro-10 is pigment, period. It uses Canon Lucia pigment inks. It does not use dye ink.

 

[pixelhero]

Ah yes, the Pro-100 is pigment black, i got it mixed up.