Raw & Post Processing, Printing > Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks
Looking at the Epson P5000
keithcooper:
After a busy period over the summer I've finally finished writing up some of my thoughts about the Epson P5000
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/review-epson-p5000-printer/
Print quality wise it's just like the P7000 I had here last year. After the first few weeks use, I've not seen any mention of a need for cleaning, so I'm assuming the automatic systems are doing well.
The longest period I've been away from the printer was 10 days - I left it switched on and set for periodic checks.
Hope it's of some interest!
PS Please do let me know if any bits of the article are unclear, since I don't have a proofreading service, and it is a bit long...
keithcooper:
Several people asked if I could do a few more 'real' nozzle checks to see if the auto systems are indeed working properly.
Well, I put some A4 copier paper into the tray and now have a bigger pile of nozzle checks - all working fully.
I was away for a bit recently and completely switched of the printer for 8-9 days - on return everything fine. I appreciate that it's just one printer, but was wondering if there are any other P5000 users here who have experience with day to day use of the printer.
The one I've got here is getting what I'd call light, but regular use, so several original carts, but Mk/Pk swaps quite often (I'm testing some new profiling solutions)
Rand47:
Keith . . . Thanks for the update.
I’ve had my P5000 for a while now. I had one instance where I ran the starter PK cart on “low ink” until the printer quit printing before changing the cart. After changing installing the new PK cart I got an error message telling me to do a “powerful cleaning” from the menu. I mistook that for doing cleanings from the driver option (ended up wasting a bunch of ink doing a pairs cleaning, then full cleaning.... before I finally realized what the error message meant). After doing what the message told me (going into the menu and doing a “powerful cleaning”) all was well, and has remained trouble free. I will often not print for a couple of weeks. No problems so far! I’m very happy with this printer, and plan to change ink carts sometime between the low ink warning, and the printer stopping because of “empty” cart. It may have been an anomaly “this one time,” since all my other Epson printers have been able to be run until they stop printing in the middle of print before changing ink carts, but I’ll not take that risk again. I’m sure I wasted way more ink w/ the “powerful cleaning” than I’d have left in the cart had I changed it earlier.
When I’m not printing for longer than a couple of weeks, I’ll fire it up and print a granger rainbow file I have (forget where I got it) that hits all the colors very well in the HDX inkset.
Rand
keithcooper:
Thanks for the comment - I let a couple of carts go all the way for the review, no problems, but since then I've also been happy to leave a ml. or two in the cart if I'm doing a long panoramic, since for a live swap not to fail or show you almost need to be standing there with a cart ready to slot in. If the printer is unattended for a while the job will fail.
I've been doing a lot more looking at B&W printing with the P5000 and now know which papers I'm happy to print with directly (ABW or with a profile) and which I'll make a simple linearising PS curve for - mainly to fix the shadow crunch that many papers exhibit. I've been looking back at some B&W work when I was testing the PRO-1000 and PRO-2000 and performance sometimes needs tweaking there too.
Whilst for many years I've used QTR 'correction' profiles (effectively as curves) I now only tend to use the QTR Create icc profile tool to crunch the measurements from a 51/21 step wedge (on my BW Test print image) and look at the numbers coming out. I realised when writing about the B&W side of things in the review that I had a lot of measurements and needed to look at things in a bit more detail than fitted in the review.
Since I've still got the printer for a bit, I hope to get a bit more done about this in the next week or two - I shouldn't complain about 'real work' keeping me busy, but I have a very large pile of B&W test prints that are just crying out for some helpful/meaningful observations about B&W printing. A few of them...
Garnick:
Hello Keith and Rand,
I moved my business to my home location back in Feb., and sold my 9900 before I left my previous location. I had decided to downsize to a 24" again, after many years of a 44" Epson. I've been working with the P7000 for 4 months and very pleased with the printer and the print quality. One of the annoyances I have discovered during cartridge replacement is something I had read about concerning the 9900, but never experienced it myself. This doesn't happen every time I do a cart replacement, but of course I never know when it might. After installing and new cart and closing the bay door I will occasionally see that one of the other carts is displaying a notice that it cannot be initialized. If I recall correctly that is the actual wording, but I'm not absolutely certain. Regardless, when this does happen I have to pull the new cart I have just installed and install it again. At that point all carts are communicating and I'm good to print again. The last time I read about this particular issue it seemed that not all printers of that model were infected with such an annoyance, only the lucky ones I guess. One other thing that was bothering me was the fact that after every "K" ink switch I could not print a nozzle check or anything else without the printer running a full cleaning cycle first, although I have all Auto Procedures turned OFF. Well, I did manage to find a workaround for that, which is great, since I quite regularly do a "K" switch. Otherwise it has so far been an excellent printer, compared with my initial experience with the 9900. I still have the "9900 Issue Log" I kept for that printer. About half way through the third warranty year the 9900 started to become much more reliable. Of course by then we had all discovered certain maintenance procedures in Service Mode that most of us were never privy to previously, and once I was on my own(no warranty) I credit those same procedures with the fact that the printer was still in good order when I sold it.
Gary
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