[Printer Recommendation] Mass Printing Borderless B&W 4x6" Text Pages

[nche11]

I should have said to set the paper size to custom (instead of A4, Letter, etc) and set it to slightly larger than 4x6, say 4.25"x6.25". But your paper is actually 4"x6". If your document is programmed to be exactly 4"x6" then it will be printed just like borderless. But there may be an issue. There must be reasons Canon switch to dye ink when you set up to print borderless. I think when you print borderless some ink will fall outside the paper's border. This part of the ink will fall onto the foam at the bottom of the paper path. If the ink is dye ink it will be absorbed by the foam. But if it is pigment ink when it dries it may be trouble down the road. If you are not printing photos why do you want to print borderless?

I think ip4000 is hard to come by these days. I would consider ip4700 if you can find one. Any ip4xxx printer will be hot out there.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I can see how this would allow the printer to print borderless on the inboard side but how does it work on the outboard side? Wouldn't you have to slide the paper over a bit?

 

[ivanalbright]

Yeah I was wondering if there would be some issues with the exact placement of the printing when you give a different paper size. As for the pigment clogging things up, I could understand that too, since I believe that's the reason laser printers can't print borderless... the stuff would eventually clog up the works so to speak.

In answer to why I'm printing borderless even though its not photos... The small pages I'm printing use layout elements that bleed off the page...just like you would see on brochures or the like. It looks much more professional and really raises the viewer's impression of the printout, rather than having them see something they could pop out of their $20 home printer in 1 minute. Its a small difference but noticeable and worth it.

Honestly, the benefits of the pigment cartridge sound great...but I really just want to be able to set 50 or so of these to print then walk away. If there is going to be a lot of troubles trying to use the pigment, I guess I might as well stick with a printer with only black dye ink?

 

[ivanalbright]

I tried emailing canon customer support. They are actually pretty responsive...but they said they wouldn't recommend any of their consumer printers for this volume. Understandable that they want to cover their butts.

For now I am continuing to use the pixma pro 9000, but would still love to hear opinions from anyone else...4x6, borderless, black text only (also black layout elements which is what is borderless), 500+ prints a week. It really is kind of a waste to have ~10 ink cartridges when I am only printing grayscale/black cartridge only, not to mention the wear on a fairly expensive large printer.

Thanks!

 

[The Hat]

ivanalbright

I have tried printing a black solid using your 4x6 layout on plain paper on three different A4 printers.
Not one of them had any trouble at all, just drop the paper in then click print and go.
The settings I used were 4x6 borderless prints with photo matte paper on the Canon i865, ip4500 and ip4700.
The first two printers used the standard fixed right hand lay (facing printer) and the other one centres the page in the middle of the carriageway.
If you can pick up any second hand Canon A4 printer, then they will do the job for you with ease and save your pro 9000 for the larger sizes.
There all plenty fast on standard quality but dont use the pigment ink at all..

 

[ivanalbright]

Thanks for the info The Hat.

could you give any details on the specific speed? I figured out the pixma pro 9000 manages about 6 of these per minute (standard quality, grayscale, 4x6, page full of ~10 pt text).

Any info on exactly how fast these printers you tested were? I had some small cheaper HP printers that could barely manage 1 per minute with the same settings! (and had constant paper feed problems, making the whole process insanely slow when trying to print hundreds of pages)

 

[The Hat]

ivanalbright

I tried it again for you and it printed 2 sheets a minute no matter which printer I used..

Update I did however try it on my pro 9500 and got one sheet per minute, so if you can get 6 sheets on your pro9000 then I reckon you have the best printer for your job..

 

[ivanalbright]

thanks for the reply and the good information. wow, isn't the pro 9500 basically the same printer with a few upgrades? amazing if that is truly the difference in speed with the same settings.

so again, I guess I will continue to use this unless anyone has other recommendations. luckily if it wears out, there have been a lot of canon rebates lately and it can be purchased on eBay for about $200 nowadays. it is just unfortunate that I have to replace all the color cartridges too, about once every 2 months, just for printhead cleaning.

 

[marceltho]

Assuming you print in portrait mode, you could print in landscape mode. It will go faster, on what ever printer you will be using.

 

[The Hat]

ivanalbright

The inside of the pro 9500 is completely different than its brother the pro 9000.
The 9000 uses CLI-8 and mine use opaque PGI-9 cartridges + all 10 are pigment.
The print head cleaning is not solely responsible for the use of your colour cartridges; they are used just as much as the photo black to output borderless prints.
The way to check this is to set your printer for Hagaki print instead of matte photo paper, that way the printer will use your photo black cartridge and cut down on the use your colours.