Yep Frank, everything we did was the straight through path from the back. The only issue we had were the pizza rollers hittting the image on the way out, but that was quickly solved by pushing up on the pizza rollers (they're actually rubber rollers on the 2200 not the starwheels like on other epson printers) and lodging a toothpick into each of the slots next to the axel.
Other than that, we experimented coating the papers (2 coats) with Inkaid and then with various profiles availlable in imageprint.... did a little babysitting of each long print as it made it's way through..no problems. These products come in gloss, semi gloss and matte as well as some tha thave semi opaque qualities.
Printer properties were being controlled by Imageprint. For black and white work on the 2200 you might have issues with the espon drivers producing decent black and white. for color, there shouldn't be much of a problem.
There is a pretty good book that my client purchased to refer to..The Digital Art Studio, by Karen Schminke.
When it all came down to it, we did a lot of tests and then jumped in.
People are putting thin sheets of metal, wood veneer, plastic etc through some of these printers incuding the 2200...we considered usinf thing sheets of metal but found a good solution in a paper we found which we mounted to some medium weight cardboard because it was very thin...I would suggest getting the book and also calling the Inkaid folks, they were very helpful. Most of the opbvious questions are answered in the FAQ section of the Inkaid site...no, Im not affiliated...
Hope that helps