Ink Cartridge Life on Epson 3800

[mccormickstudio]

I am also considering purchasing the Epson 3800 to print MF and LF color neg scans up to 16x20. The quality of the images is great and price of the printer is reasonable, but the ink costs might eat my lunch. $60 x nine cartridges = yikes.

Can anyone who uses one of these tell me about how many color 16x20's you get per new set of ink cartridges? I had a small Epson years ago and got rid of it because I was changing ink every other print. Does anyone use non-OEM inks? Or what about one of those continuous ink systems for the 3800 I see on ebay?

Thanks

[Greg Lockrey]

It's been my experiance that it costs roughly $.54 per square foot on average. Depending on coverage it could get to about $1.00 but my yearly average is more like $.54. When you first load your printer with ink, it will take about 25% so the initial charge will skew your costs. As for using other than Epson ink for their printers? Why would I want to do that especially with the 3800?

[D. Bryant]

I am also considering purchasing the Epson 3800 to print MF and LF color neg scans up to 16x20. The quality of the images is great and price of the printer is reasonable, but the ink costs might eat my lunch. $60 x nine cartridges = yikes.

Can anyone who uses one of these tell me about how many color 16x20's you get per new set of ink cartridges? I had a small Epson years ago and got rid of it because I was changing ink every other print. Does anyone use non-OEM inks? Or what about one of those continuous ink systems for the 3800 I see on ebay?

Thanks
There are no non-OEM inks available AFAIK since the 3800 uses pressurized carts. I wouldn't bother even if there were since other ink manufacturers can't match the physical specs of the K3 inks and will ultimately clog the printer.

Don Bryant

[BarryS]

The 3800 carts are available for around $45 each, but they hold 80 ml so a set can print quite a lot. I've had my printer for over year and am still on my first set of carts--although I'm running low on about half of my carts. The small format printers with their low capacity carts cost a lot more to run. If you run very high volumes, a larger production printer is the answer, not some buggy CIS system that requires you to profile every paper.

[Brian Ellis]

I bought my 3800 in March of 2007 and I'm still on the set of inks that came with the printer. I have about 40% left in everything except the light black, that's down to about 25%. I realize that doesn't answer your question and probably isn't too meaningful without knowing how much I print and even I don't know that, it certainly isn't a whole lot but then the printer doesn't sit idle for months at a time either. But it does tend to indicate the ink lasts a long time compared to some other Epson printers. I had a 2200 before the 3800 and it seemed like I was going through a set of ink every couple months with it.

After observing a friend's problems with his CIS system I would never ever have one of those things no matter how much money they saved.

[J. Gilbert Plantinga]

I print commercially, mostly on a 9800, but I have a 3800 so as to avoid swapping blacks on the 9800 for small jobs. Ink usage runs between 1 and 2 ml. per square foot, depending on the image and the dot size (2800 dpi lays down a lot of ink, 720 dpi less). Interestingly, the 3800 gets used as my plain paper office printer because ink is so much cheaper than my little letter-size Epson all-in-one.

Gilbert
http://www.upstatelight.com
http://www.gilplant.com