I am about to buy the Epson R3000 for the purpose of printing 8 inch canvas wraps of varying lengths. Currently i order prints from a commercial company and do the stretching myself.
The reason i find the R3000 appealing:
a. I won't be doing large production runs.
b. I want equipment that doesn't weigh a lot so i can move it around myself, get it serviced, etc. I'm retired and won't be getting any younger :-)
c. If i could just print canvas wraps for the 8 inch wraps, I can continue to outsource the few larger canvas sizes i need without difficulty since i don't sell a lot of those.
d. The R3000 has a side guide that apparently helps a lot with preventing sheet skew during printing. I read a lot of frustration with occasionally skewed prints on canvas with some other printers.
These are the questions i need help/advice/comments on - if at all possible. I'm a newbie regarding printing - please help :-)
Issue 1: If i use single canvas sheets, by the time i add 2" wrap borders all around, i would need 3 sizes: 12" width by 14" long (to make an 8x10" front print), by 16" long (to make an 8x12 front print), and 20" long (to make an 8x16" front print). Getting the longer single canvas sheets (do they call them panels if they are canvas?) seems to be a problem.
Issue 2: Going to 13" canvas rolls seems appealing to me because then i can cut the size i need and don't need to stock different sizes of single sheets. So how do i cut rolled canvas to the sheet sizes i need to print? I suppose to get started, i could just a scissors, especially since the cut edge is rolled behind the stretcher bars. (excuse me for thinking while i'm writing) Is there a good quality roll cutter out there? I bought a relatively cheap one the other day and it doesn't even cut photo paper stock very well - geez :-( I'd like one that is mounted on a frame to get square cuts.
Issue 3: The roll adapters provided for the R3000 are only 2" core diameter. The Epson company only sells one single canvas roll selection for the R3000. There are several other 13" x 20' canvas rolls available on the market, but i'm getting the idea these generall come with 3" core diameters. Is there a way of adapting the 3" canvas core rolls to the 2" adapters that come with the R3000? Failing to find a workaround, my only recourse seems to be buying the 3" rolls and just cutting them to single sheets (13" by 14", 16", or 20") when i need them. Is this practical for small runs?
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated as i'm new to the printing scene. Thank you!!!