Epson 4000: Ink life and production

[Ted Fullerton]

I'm hoping the Espon 4000 inkjet users on the forum can comment on the following:

- What's your experience with the life of the ultrachrome inks once installed in the printer? I've heard recommendations that they should be used within 6 months. Have you seen any degradation or other effects of using inks after that period?

- Understanding that ink use will vary considerably based on the actual prints and paper used, what's a ballpark estimate on the number of prints which can be produced with a set of 110ml inks? Can it be generalized to something like, "100 16x20s". I'd be printing both color and B&W.

- And, If I'm printing B&W, will I only be using the "black" inks, or are the other inks used in B&W production?

The background is that I'd like the ability to produce my own 16x20 prints, but I'm concerned about the ongoing ink costs, especially if I wouldn't use a set before it would "expire" in the printer.

Thanks in advance,

[Steve Hamley]

Ted,

I've got one, but haven't had enough experience to answer all your questions.

1. Haven't had any ink 6 months, even using 220ml carts. It uses a lot of ink.

2. I'd estimate about 30 16x20s per set of 110ml carts. Note that this is a very rough estimate based on color work, and the light cyan, light black, yellow, and light magenta ink seems to be used considerably faster.

3. Don't really know. I've been doing mostly color, but some quadtones and duotones which use some colored ink.

Keep in mind you really need to print something about every week. Go three and the heads will likely clog and need a power clean which seems to use about $50 worth of ink or more.

Steve

[Steve Hoffmann]

I keep hearing about the head clogging with the 4000. I'm very close to making the decision to buy one. Couldn't you just print a simple color document or a 'head check' test pattern weekly to keep the heads flowing? This is what I do with my 2200 and it seems to have the desired effect.

[tim atherton]

somewhere out there is a simple program that will do just that (as long as you computer and printer are on).

Of course I didn't note down where I saw it....

[Paul Butzi]

I don't have a 4000, I have a 9600. Still the materials are the same, and the two printers can't lay down massively different amounts of ink.

1. Ink lifetime. Right now, my printer has carts in it that I bought in April, 2004. They are dated from 10/2005 to 1/2006, so I'm guessing that ink expiry is more like 18 months than 6 months. I haven't had any trouble with these carts and they're all quite a bit more than 6 months old.

2. Ink use. I buy my ink from Lexjet (http://www.lexjet.com) and at those prices (for 220 ml carts) my ink costs run about 75 cents a square foot, printing on Epson Premium Luster paper.

Ink and paper costs for a 14x17.5 image on a 16x20 piece of paper work out to about $2.80 for me. Again, that's based on pricing from Lexjet.

3. B&W printing: It's possible to do black only printing but I think you'll get better results if you print color and do 'toning' (see http://www.butzi.net/articles/toning.htm (http://www.butzi.net/articles/toning.htm))

[tim atherton]

for B&W try the Quadtone RIP (uses black and grey + some but not all the colour inks)

Works better for MAC than PC (it's a labour of love and was developed in the MAC environment - it can work well in Windows, but the interface seems more succeptable to bugs in Windows causign it just not to work - either it seems to work on your machine or it doesn't...)

That said - if it does work (and it does seem to for most setups) it produces lovely greyscale prints after a bit of a learning curve


http://harrington.com/QuadToneRIP.html (http://harrington.com/QuadToneRIP.html)


http://www.harrington.com/QuadTonePC.html (http://www.harrington.com/QuadTonePC.html)


http://www.sbillard.org/Shareware/QTRgui.htm (http://www.sbillard.org/Shareware/QTRgui.htm)

BTW - I don't use a 4000 myself, but I know several folks who do and I've never heard mention of the 4000 having any special clogging problems

[Greg Miller]

Re: 4000 clogging problems, I can only tell you from my own experience that I have had no clogging issues. The 4000 automatically goes into sleep mode where it caps the print heads even though the printer is still on. I have done a variety of patterns ranging from printing daily to not prinitng for a couple of weeks with the power on to not print for a couple of weeks with the power off. Never a clog. (But then I have never had a clog on my 2200 and have used that for a couple of years too). I have hear rumors that humidity levels can affect cloggin rates (I live in New York which is humid in the summer but winter humidity would be quite low I think). I use only ultrachrome inks.

[Randy Becker]

The Quadtone RIP from Mr. Harrington uses all of the inks including all of the color - not just the black and light black.

Just wanted to keep things accurate.

Randy

[tim atherton]

"The Quadtone RIP from Mr. Harrington uses all of the inks including all of the color - not just the black and light black.
Just wanted to keep things accurate. "

My understanding was that it uses Black+grey (or Light Black as Epson likes to call it) and some, but not necessarily all, of the colours?

This was in part because of the metamerism problem which is exacerbated by certain of the colour inks.

[Larry Gebhardt]

From looking at the prints with a loupe I would say it mainly uses the black and gray. I don't see any other color dots, but I assume they are there since I printed with a mix of warm and cool tones. A great product for the 2200 and I assume the 4000.

[tim atherton]

On checking - QTR uses the K and lK inks + lM, lC and Y the Ultrachrome profiles - for some profiles it is just the first two for others it uses some of those three coloured inks.

Which, if we are keeping things accurate, is what I said inthe first place.... :-)

[Kirk Gittings]

A few responses, I own a 4000:

I agree on the costs stated above in Paul's reply.

No problems with clogging that a "head check" doesn't immediately cure.

I bought some old inks (over 9 months) from a friend-no problem.

I tried a number of the RIPs out there prior to purchase and found the Colorbyte Image print to be the best for my purposes even with the expense, especially (especially!!!) if you run color and b&w as I do. QTR was very primitive at the time of my purchase for PCs. I run production color and B&w fine art. The IP interface is friendly, the spooling and ganging is superior and the profiles are better targeted for display (even better than the Atkinson profiles that come with the printer which are pretty damn good). Spooling and ganging--This meams that when I have spare paper, rather than running the main print and then triming and throwing it, I can plug in a "Notecard template" of my design with text that uses the extra paper for notecards with capitions. Even if the large print is b&w I can plug in a notecard or two in the margin in color or vice versa. It is sweet. Also-The b&w Tint picker (especially in 6.0) that now allows you to pick unlimited tints for the highlights and shadows seperately is pure butter and they are more true photgraphic equivilent tints. I prefer a subtle warm highlight and cool shadow like when you run warm tone paper in a cold tone developer with selenium. Paul Butzi has an alternative method on his site that works pretty well, but the IP tinting is, as I said above, pure butter. Also the "adjustable black point" also allows you to balance shadow detail with D-max in a way that gets me closer to what I think is a truely tonally rich b&w print.