Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: danaz on April 24, 2013, 04:58:44 pm

Title: questions for owners of epson 4900
Post by: danaz on April 24, 2013, 04:58:44 pm
Hi all,

Been reading this forum for about a year after seeing it come up on lots of google searches when trying to fix problems with my current printers, so thought i'd ask some questions about the 4900's which i'm thinking of upgrading to.

What i want to know is if the 4900 can print accurately from the auto sheet tray in both bordered and borderless printing without the print being skewed?

I am looking to purchase two 4900s and load each tray with my two most popular paper sizes, and then run the prints in either bordered or borderless settings.

The reason i ask (and the problem i am looking to avoid) is that i have owned five epson 3880's and every single one of them has suffered from the following problem: when gathering paper from the vertical auto-feed the paper occasionally skews slightly anti-clockwise resulting in either a skewed border on a bordered print, or a sliver of unprinted paper on the trailing right edge where the angle of the paper has out-run the borderless expansion in that trailing corner.

Please note i am not looking for a solution to this problem on the 3880. I just want to know if the 4900 can print from the auto-feed trays without twisting the paper resulting in a skewed print.

For instance - if you owned a 4900 and printed a perfectly black square on 8x10 paper, would the borderless print result in a perfectly black 8x10 print on all four sides, and would the bordered print result in a black print with even borders on all four sides.

I know the 4900's use much better vacuum technology than the 3880's pizza cutters, so hoping this problem might be solved.

Thanks for any help
Title: Re: questions for owners of epson 4900
Post by: Schewe on April 24, 2013, 06:09:34 pm
What i want to know is if the 4900 can print accurately from the auto sheet tray in both bordered and borderless printing without the print being skewed?

Yes...more or less. There is less skew on a 4900 than 3880 because of the mechanics. Is it "perfect"? No...if you were printing borderless, are you using the option to retain size or size up? That will make a difference because the tolerances are not "perfect"...better, but not perfect.

I would suggest seeing a demo for your self if you have a dealer in the area...
Title: Re: questions for owners of epson 4900
Post by: danaz on April 25, 2013, 04:07:10 pm
That's a bit disappointing. I don't see why $1500 worth of printer can't handle media correctly.

Do you ever have head strike problems with the 4900?

This is another problem i've experienced with the 3880 but wonder if the vacuum handling reduces head strikes.
Title: Re: questions for owners of epson 4900
Post by: Schewe on April 25, 2013, 05:13:47 pm
That's a bit disappointing. I don't see why $1500 worth of printer can't handle media correctly.

It's a question of mechanical tolerances and how much the cost of engineering would be to increase the precision...again, read what I wrote, yes, the 4900 paper feed is better than the 3880. No, it's not "perfect".

Quote
Do you ever have head strike problems with the 4900?

Nope...

To be honest, the only time I have had head strikes is on end or roll roll paper...
Title: Re: questions for owners of epson 4900
Post by: danaz on April 25, 2013, 05:18:18 pm
Thanks for the responses.

I am going to purchase a 4900 and give it a try with a view to maybe picking up a couple more.

My main problem with the 3880 is print speed which the 4900 more than doubles. Beyond that, the problem of having to manually feed each piece to avoid the skewed print from the auto-feed is beginning to be a real pain at over 300 prints per week. Hopefully the improvement you describe in the 4900 will be enough that I won't have to manually feed them all.
Title: Re: questions for owners of epson 4900
Post by: jrsforums on April 25, 2013, 05:39:53 pm
Jeff is correct about the 4900 vs the 3880...better, but not perfect.

I have both (with a 3800 in a prior life).  The 4900 is faster and feeds better.  If tolerences are not set correctly or you try to print max. area on badly curled paper (deroll it),you will get head crashes....vacuum or not.

Some paper types must be hand fed from the rear feeder, not from the tray.  Manual details this.