Epson P 5000 new ink cartridges

[praja343]

Hello:
I went to a Epson dealer to look at the P 5000 printer. I was asking him about the ink consumption and the new printer coming with 80 ml cartridges. He said when I turned on the new printer, most of the 80 ml would be used in charging the lines and advised me that after a few prints,  I would be springing about $ 1000.00 for ten 200 ml cartridges. Has that been the experience of people using the printer? Any estimate on the number of say 8.5x11 prints that can be printed on the original 80 ml cartridges after installation in a new printer?
Thanks.

[I.T. Supplies]

Unfortunately that is the case with most printers nowadays; especially with Epson's.  They come with actual starter inks (nothing full size), unless it's the P800 or smaller which is a full set.

About 30-50% is used to fill the line and print head and the rest you can use either for checking nozzles or printing.  The Lt Black may go the quickest since it shares the same channel as the MBK/PBK, so best to get a replacement right away.  There's a good chance you may not need to get Orange and Green right away, so that may save you money.  10 inks is about $900 (depending if you need to pay tax).

Since there isn't really a way to estimate how many prints in any size you can do, it's based on the image and settings you select.  Ink usage is .5 - 1.3ml per sq/ft.

Hope this helps.

[Mark D Segal]

Hello:
I went to a Epson dealer to look at the P 5000 printer. I was asking him about the ink consumption and the new printer coming with 80 ml cartridges. He said when I turned on the new printer, most of the 80 ml would be used in charging the lines and advised me that after a few prints,  I would be springing about $ 1000.00 for ten 200 ml cartridges. Has that been the experience of people using the printer? Any estimate on the number of say 8.5x11 prints that can be printed on the original 80 ml cartridges after installation in a new printer?
Thanks.

When the printer is shipped, the lines and the head come packed with shipping fluid to prevent air contamination in storage and transport. When you first charge the lines, the shipping fluid is expelled into the waste tank and the inking system is filled with ink. Because the ink in the lines gets expelled through the print head when making prints (i.e. it is used for printing), there is in fact very little loss of the initial ink fill, but the lines remained filled when you replace the cartridges, so that line fill is in fact never consumed for prints at the end of a cartridge life and Epson does not tell us how much ink that line fill immobilizes. Based on my latest measurements of ink consumption in the SC-P5000, I have determined that it consumes about 0.0115 ml per square inch. That amounts to abut 1.66 ml per square foot of printed image. The photos used for compiling this data are colourful ordinary photographs. If they were photographs of snow scenes much less ink would be used. Let us say your 8.5 x 11 inch sheet were filled with a photo printed at 6.5 x 9 inches (i.e. one inch border on the four sides), you are printing 58.5 square inches, using about 0.67 ml of ink. The different colours will be consumed at different rates. On top of that, ink will be consumed for maintenance - when you need to unclog nozzles, and once every six months or so, the printer will ask for a power cleaning from the Admin Menu which consumes about 70ml of ink. Ink used for maintenance is non-trivial but Epson, like Canon, will not provide any estimates of this usage. To do so they would need to define a standard set of working conditions for measuring it, because several factors influence it and neither manufacturer has undertaken such a task intended for users. I mention it because maintenance ink adds substantially to total usage. Bottom line - it's not possible to say with any confidence how many 8.5 x 11 sheets you will manage on this initial ink fill.

[praja343]

Thanks for the info. It looks like I will have to budget for ink replacement fairly quickly after the purchase.

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks for the info. It looks like I will have to budget for ink replacement fairly quickly after the purchase.

Maybe not that quickly - depends on how much printing you do. Let's make a rough assessment that out of the 800 ml supplied, you will be able to use about 600 for prints. At the 0.67 ml/print I estimated above, you would likely be able to make roughly 900 prints on the initial supply. If you use high quality paper, the paper will be considerably more expensive than the ink.

[Rand47]

Mark,

Thanks for posting your experience with ink consumption per square inch on the P5000.  Very helpful.

Rand

[praja343]

I assume the 800 ml is from the 10x80 ml for the 10 colors. I.T. Supplies estimates 30 - 50% for the initial fill of the lines and print head which would leave (conservatively) 400 ml in the printer, one power clean and some nozzle checks (75 ml say) would result in  325 ml remainder in the carts. Using the Segal factor this would still be enough to print 485 sheets. Enough for a few months at least. Then loading the full carts will be enough for printing 3000 sheets. Mark's  statement about cost of paper being the limiting factor then becomes justified.
Live and learn.

[MarkFarber]

I know this thread is old, but I’m preparing (with some hesitation) to trade in my Canon Pro-1000 for an Epson P5000.  I’ve scoured the web, particularly LuLu, for everything written on these (and comparable) printers and have found Mark’s review and frequent comments particularly helpful.

Mark: your May 13 post here is the only number I’ve found anywhere -- 0.0115ml/in2 -- on P5000 ink consumption.  It’s comparable to Red River’s estimates for the 3880 of .0090ml/in2 for luster and .0104 for matte; and .0121 for the Pro-1000.  If I understand correctly, all of these analyses were done from estimating ink consumed for an extended actual print run, so they exclude any heavy deep-clean maintenance.  Do I understand your procedure correctly?

The primary motivators for my switch are ink cost and the desire for roll printing.  Regarding cost, in the past 24 months, I’ve spent $3370 for 62 Pro-1000 ink cartridges.  The $/ml cost of the 200ml tanks is 40% less than for the 80ml tanks.  And I think the Pro-1000 self-consumes more for maintenance.  As I’ve posted elsewhere, I’ve consumed over 7 maintenance cartridges in those 2 years.  Based on Pangiotis’ LuLu posting that a Pro-1000 maintenance tank contains 220ml, 33.4% of my $3370 went into maintenance tanks.  One similar metric: 1 filled maintenance tank per 7.9 80ml ink cartridges on my Pro-1000 over 2 years; my 3880 over 5 years filled 1 maintenance tank (unknown capacity but similar physical size) per 27.0 ink cartridges.  And the 3880 was utilized less frequently and was always turned off between sessions, both worse for maintenance.  So even if the 3880’s maintenance tank is twice the size (which it’s not), the Pro-1000 spits in the spittoon waaaaaay (that’s a technical term) more.

Anyone else have data?  Particularly, data on self-consumption?

Also, anyone, any updated anecdotes on P5000 reliability, ease of use, operational guidance, etc?  So far what I’ve gleaned is:  Always on.  Always run test pattern before prints.  Deep clean on manual.  Never deep clean if the test pattern is clean.  Run something through at least 2-3 times per week.  Use a good dust cover.  Use a humidifier during dry winter months.  Anything else?

My major hesitation is that I’m largely away for 2 months in the summer, so I may look into the auto-test-print procedure if I can find it on the web again.  I just got back from a month away, and my Pro-1000 spit for 40 minutes and polished off 3 (admittedly low) cartridges and an (admittedly largely full) maintenance tank before I got a test pattern.  See attached.

Mark