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

[ivanalbright]

Well...I have it set to grayscale in the canon printer driver properties/settings, so it should only be using the black. I do understand that normally black is a combination of colors (for a nice rich black) but I'm specifically printing grayscale... which I can only assume is the black cartridge only?

 

[ghwellsjr]

Not necessarily. On Canon printers with a pigment black cartridge, when you are selecting plain paper and not doing borderless printing, the printer will use only the pigment black ink. But for Canon printers without a pigment black cartridge, it may behave in the same manner as it does for printing on photo papers which is to mix the dye black ink with various other colors, even when you select greyscale. I'm just speculating, you will have to do a test to find out for sure. The test is to fill a dye black cartridge with cleaning solution so that it prints "clear" when you do a nozzle test and then do a printout of your target image and see if anything prints.

 

[RMM]

On my Pro9000 I'm pretty sure that it only uses the black cartridge when I select "print in greyscale" in the printer driver. I can not see any other colored dots when examined under a magnifying glass. The printer also prints at about 1/5th the normal speed.

My other Canons do not behave this way, they use the various color mixtures to create the greyscale.

 

[qwertydude]

I think an Epson Workforce 30 with an empty CISS would work well for this use. Simply fill all the tanks with black ink. Pigment will work fine since it's designed for pigment and weekly printing should prevent clogging. I have an Artisan 50 but I'm sure the process will work on the cheaper Workforce. Simply select photo paper glossy, then select draft quality (since it's technically a photo it'll print about as fast as plain paper normal). It'll go borderless and it uses the colors so with a whole CISS with 5 tanks full of black ink it'll last a good long time. Using the color nozzles can be seen as an advantage because you've filled them with black so it'll reduce the drain and wear and tear on just the black nozzles leading to a longer lasting ink supply and print head life. I wouldn't recommend the Canon's because you'll be refilling constantly and it uses less durable construction. You need a CISS for this kind of print volume and a dedicated black and white printer with a CISS filled with all black ink.

Also because it uses all the inks it'll be longer before you have to reset the ink cartridges, with this volume of printing on a Canon you'll need the ink monitoring to prevent burning out print heads from running dry while unsupervised. This will be annoying since you have to babysit the printer if you want to run with ink monitoring disabled. Whereas a button CISS from someone like aaadealsalways on ebay works fine, new epsons don't like arc chips. You'll get a long time between resets since it uses the color carts too.

 

[ivanalbright]

Wow, very interesting qwertydude...that sounds like a great idea. I am seeing an epson workforce 30 with the CISS already installed on eBay for only around $100 shipped... I will definitely look into this. One thought: you mentioned using pigment black ink in all 5 tanks, but from everything I have heard, printing borderless with pigment ink might clog up the "roller" or whatever other internal moving parts? Any thoughts on this?

Ink refilling isn't currently as big of an issue, but it would be very nice to not have to worry about it. Currently I only have to swap out the black cartridge about once per run of ~500 prints. (Then there is the slow drain on the color cartridges though too)

 

[ivanalbright]

quick update and one more quick question:

I ended up going with an epson workforce 610 with a CISS. (found some great deals and got the whole setup for $0 after selling the original included ink carts!) Ive got it set up and working okay, my only issue is that as feared, it is a LOT slower. I have timed it to take 40 seconds for each 4x6 B&W borderless page. This ends up taking about 8 hours of solid print time per week based on my current ~800pgs/week requirement! My canon pixma 9000 did it in 1/3 or less of the time.

I have tried everything in the settings. I have to use premium presentation matte paper setting in order to be able to print borderless at 4x6" (plain paper setting grays out the borderless option). I have selected draft mode, high speed printing, and grayscale and have tried everything else I can think of, but can't get down to under 40 seconds per page.

edit: by selecting "photo paper glossy" and then draft, I was able to get the print speed down to a very nice 14 sec/page. unfortunately at that speed/quality, the text was very noticeably sloppy so I think I will have to stick to the higher quality 40sec/page. again the pixma pro 9000 was apparently amazing at its combination of speed and quality in comparison.

if anybody has any info on "hacked" drivers that might allow me more control over the settings, i would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

 

[The Hat]

Try using a Canon Printer...

 

[qwertydude]

I suppose you could always get another printer. A Workforce 30 is not very expensive. And comparing a cheaper workforce to a $500 wide format printer is kinda unfair. For $500 I could buy a bank of single function Workforces with CISS and for what you're doing end up printing much faster and at just as high a quality as the Pro 9000 and not have the hassle of refilling cartridges. After all you're only printing 1/3 as fast as the Canon, so adding two more printers will bring you up to speed, get you the quality you need and probably still cost less than buying the Pro 9000. You also then get the ability to have a much higher paper volume meaning less babysitting filling the paper, which is probably one of the bigger annoyances once you get ink babysitting out of the way.