Workforce Pro printers, comments?

[crenedecotret]

Hi everyone, I don't see many threads on the Epson Workforce Pro printers.

I was able to find a pretty good deal on a WP-4090 printer. 55 $CDN which is about 50$ USD. My Canon IP4500 has seen better days. I don't print CDs and photos much anymore so I figured "mehhh why not". I love that the epson unit has HUGE cartridges. I won't need to refill as often, and one less cart to worry about (it's a four color printer).

I have the printer still in it's box and should receive my refillable cartridges in a couple of days. I won't be using the OEM carts at any point. The refillables will be filled with DYE ink (OEM is pigment). I figured if I occasionally want to print a photo, I can use matte or plain paper settings to force the printer to use black ink + I have a Colormunki to profile papers

Who else owns one of these Workforce Pro printers? Have you all stuck to OEM equivalent inks or have some of you experimented a bit?

 

[Lucas28]

This seems a good choice to me. I especially like the big cartridges and the front loading of them.

 

[cls]

The WP are great for massive printing, I never encountered a "real" clog with the printhead since it should theoretically always be soaked with ink

I have several customers whom divert serveral Workforce Pro with refillable cartriges to utilizes them as a printing army.

One customer is printing training and educational book for distance learning students and he first bought Epson WF-3010DW models (printing only) five of them, I equiped all with a CISS and he was heavily printing on these unti we switched to Epson WF Pro WP-4545 (dont know the AU modell )
now he has four of them printing every month over 40.000 Sheets duplex and it works just as it supposed to be.

and 50 USD is certainly a steal for this machine you could even sell the original Cartriges if they are still sealed

Dye Ink should be no problem at all, I used several machines with Sublimation Ink,
but I did not convert them, I started with Subli Ink right out of the box, cleaning or puriging all ink is a hard job you will need the adjustment software to do this

since you are already into Profile Making and Colormanagement this should work out for you just fine

 

[crenedecotret]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I won't be able to discuss my results right away. The unit I received was defective. Turned it on and had horrible grinding noises. I ended up calling Epson support who had me unplug it a couple of times. Now it's stopped grinding but after a few seconds, all light starts flashing.

They will be sending me another printer within 2 to 10 bsuiness days. bummer.

The refillables are nice. A full 100ml bottle fits in a cart. I guess i'll need to order a spare set of inks when I have a working printer

 

[ghwellsjr]

Hi everyone, I don't see many threads on the Epson Workforce Pro printers.

I was able to find a pretty good deal on a WP-4090 printer. 55 $CDN which is about 50$ USD. My Canon IP4500 has seen better days. I don't print CDs and photos much anymore so I figured "mehhh why not". I love that the epson unit has HUGE cartridges. I won't need to refill as often, and one less cart to worry about (it's a four color printer).

I have the printer still in it's box and should receive my refillable cartridges in a couple of days. I won't be using the OEM carts at any point. The refillables will be filled with DYE ink (OEM is pigment). I figured if I occasionally want to print a photo, I can use matte or plain paper settings to force the printer to use black ink + I have a Colormunki to profile papers

Who else owns one of these Workforce Pro printers? Have you all stuck to OEM equivalent inks or have some of you experimented a bit?

I have been using a WP-4530 for over a year now and I love it.

I don't understand your concerns regarding printing photos.

1) What is the issue with forcing the printer to use black ink?

2) The OEM ink works just fine with any photo paper.

3) If you are using dye ink, what is the issue?

I only use OEM inks that I get very cheaply using Staples rewards for the empty Canon cartridges that I turn in. No experimenting.

I will tell you that several printers that I bought in different stores all had the same problem so I returned them except the last one which was replaced by Epson and works perfectly.

I will also tell you that if you take the starter cartridges out of one printer and put them in another printer, they will report a lot less ink in them. Epson warns that the starter cartridges are intended for only the original printer. I doubt that the starter cartridges are actually keyed to the original printers so if you have never used them, they probably will deliver all their ink to another printer but keep in mind that they are only half full which means that their value is half of a purchased cartridge.

 

[crenedecotret]

I received the replacement from Epson a couple of days ago.. so far so good. Even before I profiled the dye ink, I was getting a decent match between the monitor and printer. Actually, much better than any other printer i've used so far, out of the box, with no profiles!

The reason I wanted to use dye ink is that I did not want to deal with the gloss differential issues that sometimes come with using pigment inks with glossy paper. While I could of used matte or semi-gloss/luster paper, I still have a few hundred sheets of Kirkland glossy photo paper. With a new printer, I had the opportunity of starting it out with whatever inkset I wanted to use and not worry about how mixing different inks would affect the printer.

Regarding the settings, the matte settings gave me much much better results because it forces the printer to use all CMYK inks. The glossy settings only use CMY. Now maybe if I was using the OEM pigment inks, using all CMYK inks on the glossy paper would not have been a good idea, I really don't know. What I did is print a test image with a few of the different paper selections available in the driver. I then picked the best one and from there, created a profile. I'm now getting nice vibrant prints with decent shadow details that nicely match my monitor. I always test the different media settings. Whatever is built-in is designed for OEM papers, not aftermarket.