which Printer+Scanner with bottled ink shoukd I buy - Epson or Canpm?

[martin0reg]

Hello again all you printer afficionades!

Four years ago I got back to my wet darkroom. Of my printers I kept only a Epson R285 for office printing (and a 3880 for photo printing,- which I still use if I'm tired of working in the dark with enlarger and chemicals)

Now I want to buy a printer+scanner for bottled ink, like Epson ecotank,. I don't wabt to mess around with refillable cartridges or rhird party CIS's
I remember that the tests of original bottled ink from Epson and Canon - by well knpwn member Ink Stained Fingers - revealed better longetivity of the Epson ink than Canon ink.
So which printer model, size a4 with scanner and ink bottles, is best for everyday purpose, and uses a good ink?

Best regards, martin0reg

 

[Ink stained Fingers (2)]

I would not make the longevity performance of the Canon Chromalife 100 or the Epson Claria inks an decision criterion to decide between Canon or Epson. I rather would go by the overall functionality of a combo which meets best your requirements, you may use the Drucker-Finder search function of the Druckerchannel web pages. The first decision should be if you think you need a printer with dye inks or with pigment inks - and then the format - A4 or A3 .

Lots of tests in the past have shown that you can sort the dye inks into a few groups with rather similar performance, there are the brand name Epson/Claria and the Canon/Chromalife100 inks - used in some of the Eco/Megatankprinters like the G550/650 or the ET-7750 or ET-8550 - with the GI53 inks or the Epson 106 or 114 inks. These inks give you the best longevity overall, I don't really think that the reported differences are critical to any degree.
The good thing is that you easily can use the Claria inks on other printers - swapping the inks is easy - you just swap the keyed top of the bottle which is screwed on.
That's not possible with Canon inks - but it is almost as easy to swap Chromalife inks into the ink bottles of another printer - with a long blunt needle and a syringe.

There is a 2nd group of inks - with a pretty much lower performance - OEM and 3rd party inks like Ink'Tec are somewhat similar - yes - both Epson and Canon offer inks with a much lower stability than those in the first group - inks like Canon GI52 and similar or Epson 664 or 104 and similar. Both Epson and Canon do not explain the customer that such wide differences in ink performance exist.

and there is a third group of dye inks - unkown 3rd party manufacturers - which fade that fast that you almost can watch the changes from day to day.

 

[martin0reg]

Thank you for helping me to find a decision.
One more reason, why I would prefer epson is the "cold" piezo head, because in the past I had to renew many canon "hot" bubble jet printheads because of burnt nozzles.

What do you think about the Epson Ecotank ET 2825?
The price seems to be very reasonable, actually around 200€.
Downside may be the speed, especially when printing photos.
- the ink is "104"- any expirience with this ink?
- you said swapping inks would be easy ... could you explain the "keyed top" of new Epson bottles? How do they communicate with the printer?
- most important: could I fill in ink from Epson big carts for Drylabs? I still have some 500ml of this high quality dye ink (which I remember we both believed to identify as "Claria" or Claria like quality five years ago)
Any information about color matching of different Epson dye inks?
My drylab cartridges are C-M-Y-K, no light colors in these drylabs. The ET-2825 also has 4 color channels, no LM and LC needed.
The Printer seems to use dye inks for C-M-Y, but pigment K. Probably for deep sharp text printing, not for photo printing I think. Are there any concerns on swapping pigment K for dye K from my drylab carts?

edit: my drylab ink is "Fuji DL" (not Epson .. but of Epson Claria quality)

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, the Drylab inks should work fine in the Epson printers; Epson has a similar product range with the SL - Surelab - D500 - and other - printers, those inks - Claria like - are the T54C inks in bottles. The same ink in larger cartridges for the larger printers like the D700 are much more expensive with the ink/litre price.

The ET-2825 uses a printhead which you find in millions of entry level Workforce and XP-home printers since 10+ years, it is reliable, runs with 180 bk and 3x59 CMY nozzles, it prints pretty slow with higher qualtiy settings.

The ET-2825 runs borderless only on 10x15 cm, not on A4, and it does not come with a user replaceable waist ink bin as other similar printer models do since some time.

The ink bottles are mechanically keyed at the top, so you cannot fill black ink into any other ink reservoir. You can screw off the top of the bottle and open it for refill or move these bottle caps to other bottles.

This 104 ink as mentioned above is not Claria like in longevity, Epson does not ship a premium ink like the 106 or 114 with an entry level printer combo.

The ET-2825 uses a dye black as per product specs - look to the ink consumables

https://www.druckerchannel.de/devic...tank_et_2825#verbrauchsmaterialien_reichweite

 

[pharmacist]

Hi Martin0reg,

Many years ago I bought some DL ink from you and I am still using it in my Epson XP-15000 printer. I see you use an R285 using CcMmYK configuration. You can dilute these DL inks to make LM and LC (30% C/M + 70% clear ink base) using my clear ink formule (works very well in piezo print heads). I suggest the ET-8500, the smaller version of the ET-8550 using pigment text black, photo black, gray (15% DL PK with 85% clear ink base), cyan, magenta, yellow and with scanner. It prints beautiful photos (PK and gray ink). Just to consume your DL inks.

 

[martin0reg]

Hi Pharmacist, nice to hear from you! I hope you're doing fine.

In my R285 I'm indeed using cyan + magenta, diluted with your clear ink recipe, to get LC and LM. works fine.
The ET-8500 seems to be a fine printer for my needs, including photo printing, But it costs more than double the price of ET-2825. The a4 model costs 530€ the bigger a3 model 630€ - what makes the decision even more difficult.

Because for hiigh quality photo printing I kept my a2 workhorse, epson 3880.
Buying the ET-8550 would make sense for me if I would sell my 3880. But I like this Printer, although it is bit oversized for my everyday use..
Anyway, thanks for your advices, to you and ISF, I have to think about it...

 

[The Hat]

thanks for your advices, to you and ISF, I have to think about it...

Buy the ET-8500 first and if you then sell your 3880 later, you’ll have covered the cost of the more expensive printer and also have all that extra space, my two cent worth..

 

[martin0reg]

After a closer look at the prices paid for a 3880, I think Iwould get around 400 - 500 €.. For a ET-8550 I would have to pay around 650. That means going from A2 to A3 would cost 200€... not now!

Another plan: because I'm shooting film more often now with old vintage caneras, iit would be nice to have a high quality scanner for negatives and slides, up to format 6x6cm For the "hybrid" way to the print: shooting on film and developping to negatives (anlalogue) - scanning - printing with inkjet (digital)
So I will keep my 3880, and have to declogg my old R285 for everyday use. Then buy a scanner instead of a printer...