I'll just chime in here a little in regards to printer choice. First of all, the 3800/3880 is one of the most popular Piezography platforms for matte and glossy, so I would not shy away from it. We have sold hundreds and hundreds of matte/glossy system on that platform. The prints need to be hair dried before passing through a second time for the GO overprint. I can't explain Eleanor's experience with it and her persistent pizza wheel marks. It could be her printer's specs are on the tight side. But, we do have a ton of 3800/3880 happy piezographers and they nearly all use a 2-3 minute forced air dry with a simple hair dryer - then do the Piezography Gloss Overprint. I recall that Eleanor could not get good print quality unless she used the top feed. By using an alternative feed there are no pizza wheels - and most of our customers are able to use the alternate feeds and still align their print heads properly. Having said that, if you buy a new 3880 - just run it through all of its alignment tests in color and if you get fuzzy dots - just return it for a better one. But it remains a printer in which the GO and both the matte and glossy ink options are all installed at one time.
We are now offering Piezography2 systems on 8 ink slot printers which reduce the K7 to a K6 but both matte and glossy options are installed on the 4800, 4880, 7800/9800, 7880/9880 legacy systems. Not officially released until all of the curve libraries are completed but we are doing private profiling for those who choose to get the system from us. It will not be on the inkjetmall website until in official release - and then we will send all the curves to Roy Harrington for inclusion.
Also, we now have a digital negative option for regular K7 systems for the 3800/3880, 2400, 2880, 7800/9800, 7880/9880. This matters to some when they are choosing a printer model.
For desktop sizes and matte only the R1400 is hard to beat for the value but it does require hand feeding of thicker art papers (but it does take them). This printer is often in the Epson refurb store for under $200 and you can buy a pair for less than the cost of a R2880. However, it is very easy to change cart sets on the 1400/1430 and the R2880 or R2400 so that you can run multiple Piezography ink sets by simply changing out carts. No flushing needed. The R2880 is a good matte/gloss system and our cart sets come with both black ink options.
The new R3000 must really be dedicated to one ink set. But, this is also a very nice printer. There is no POWER CLEAN available for it and it does have dampers and ink lines - so that best to start it up as a virgin or to download the Epson PC Utility so that you can perform an ink initialization. Great printer for Piezography.
All of the PRO printers remain the most popular for conversion. We probably convert more 7800/9800 and 7880/9880 than any other platform. The 7900/9900 is beginning to get popular, too. And for some we have devised a sort of multi-ink split toning option which allows choosing a main ink set and then having a blending option with 3 shades of a second ink - and then using two curves and blending feature. We will soon expand that into a dual matte/glossy two ink system called Piezography Pro2. later in the summer...
Because Piezography quality is the same from printer platform to printer platform - you can choose by you budget. For my own work, I use an R2880 because I like having all of the ink sets at my disposal and I can change from Neutral to Carbon in about 5 minutes. I happen to like 13x19 prints. Otherwise I print giant on a Roland. So - if you wanted to build a dream system in which you could use any of the ink sets including split tones and your own custom Piezography ink blends - the R2880 remains the only printer that gives such easy and fast freedom. Changing a set of carts in it cleans out the ink from the previous carts automatically. If that is something that might interest you - you can contact me offline or you can ask more and I will try to monitor this thread.
Best regards,
Jon Cone
Piezography