Extended storage of printer

[sloow]

I will be spending 6 months away from my studio and am trying to decide on the best way to deal with dealing with my 44" z3100.

I can't imagine that it's a good thing to just unplug the thing for 6 months and hope all will be well when I get back. Will it survive 6 months just in Standby mode, waking itself up every 3 or 4 hours. If the power gets turned off, will it reboot itself?

My other options that I can imagine are to sell the thing and buy a new one when I get back.. Probably lose $1000 - $1500 in the process, but any decision is going to cost something.

If I rent it, what would be a realistic rate to charge for wear and tear and dealing with maintenance. A base rate plus a usage rate? A flat rate? Any suggestions on how to avoid tragedy?

thanks a million

Paul

[mmurph]

I can't comment too much on the Z.  

With my Epsons, I would buy or make a set of flush carts.  Clean the thing out with flushing fluid, then leave that sit in the lines. Or, drain the lines after flushing.

I do understand that prolonged exposure of the plastic/rubber parts to alcohol is bad, so no alcohol in the final flush.

Good luck!

Best,
Michael

[rdonson]

Paul,

I would make sure that the ink carts have a decent amount of ink in them and leave it on.  I'd buy a UPS for the printer.  I have one on mine now.  In standby the printer doesn't draw much power. A $100 UPS would easily provide several hours of power should an outage occur.  I don't think ink usage during this period of standby would be all that much.

If you rent it out you'd want to make sure it was to someone you trust and feel is trained on the printer.  I wouldn't be surprising if we had another firmware and driver update in the next 6 months.  Who ever is renting it might want to perform the update.

[neil snape]

I think that the printer reboots if unplugged. Try it to find out.
Six months for the Z print heads is a long time without the minimal debit needed to maintain them. In ink leaving it on for 6 months will cost less than 100ml of ink so about the cost of a bi pack including the electricity to turn it on , cycle the maintenance and go back to sleep.


I wouldn't rent a printer unless you know the person/people very well.

Selling it is an option  that is costly but will show you options at the time you buy again that may be in your interests.

If you leave it off for 6 months, you will risk the print heads to an aggressive cleaning, perhaps too much so for the thermal heads to come back to life.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

I think that the printer reboots if unplugged. Try it to find out.
Six months for the Z print heads is a long time without the minimal debit needed to maintain them. In ink leaving it on for 6 months will cost less than 100ml of ink so about the cost of a bi pack including the electricity to turn it on , cycle the maintenance and go back to sleep.
I wouldn't rent a printer unless you know the person/people very well.

Selling it is an option  that is costly but will show you options at the time you buy again that may be in your interests.

If you leave it off for 6 months, you will risk the print heads to an aggressive cleaning, perhaps too much so for the thermal heads to come back to life.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=193107\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Leave it ON! Aside from minimal power draw, that's the best option in my opinion. You may find that when you return there are some additional options in the large format printer market, however if your happy with your printer the best option for ROI is to keep it and use it for a long time to come. We had out Z3100 sit unused for a few months, and left powered on, it went back to work without any issues.

[sloow]

Hi,

Thanks for the responses, Sounds like the best bet will in fact be to leave the thing running. It seems like a good idea to buy a UPS as well, although the machine does reboot itself after a power outage as Neil suggests.

Now, if I could only get the thing to email its IP address, I could leave a roll of paper in it and just send it a file to print every so often. I could come back from Paris to an exhibition printed and waiting for me in the basket!

cheers,
paul

[neil snape]

Hi,

Thanks for the responses, Sounds like the best bet will in fact be to leave the thing running. It seems like a good idea to buy a UPS as well, although the machine does reboot itself after a power outage as Neil suggests.

Now, if I could only get the thing to email its IP address, I could leave a roll of paper in it and just send it a file to print every so often. I could come back from Paris to an exhibition printed and waiting for me in the basket!

cheers,
paul
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=193400\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You can indeed send to your server, print jobs, and the printer sends back job reports through SMTP, but I never did receive a reply on how to do this. I suppose one could do this through VNC, or Apple Remote.  For those who work with networking , there are a lot of functions that the Z has that could only be exploited by an expert in networking. I would have liked to see clear documentation and or help on using SMTP. Same for running jobs through to your local printer lab with job parameters already in place. I suppose it is best to wait until the photo labs and fine art printers have the Z printers and worry about these nice features after which may be the case.

[Wally]

the good folks at MIS have a freeware program called Autoprint for both PC and Mac. It is designed for their CFS systems, anyway it will automatically print a page once a day or once a week. I would run that. You can find it here

http://www.inksupply.com/cobra.cfm

another option that works with Epsons anyway is to leave your printer on but plugged into a simple lamp timer. On the Epsons everytime you cut the power it turns back on and does a a head clean and maintenence cycle. If you get one of the digital lamp timers you could program it to turn itself off once a week and the turn back on.

the last option would be a service like Gotomypc
www.gotomypc.com/ that easily gives you remote access