Epson 9570 Updates

[hubell]

If you want your long term user review of the Epson 9570 to be useful for current and prospective owners of this printer and the 24” version, the 7570, I would offer two suggestions

1. Start a separate article dedicated to you 9570 review and provide your updates in that article, rather than burying them in a an article about totally disconnected topics.

2. A 70% success rate for producing prints that are not damaged by head strikes is obviously a very poor performance. I appreciate that are not sugarcoating it. It would be very helpful if you would provide detail about the specific papers you are using, which settings you are using with those papers, and what your experience is with those papers and printer settings. Through trial and error, you will eventually figure out what papers work well with which settings and which just won’t work well at all. Of course, in my experience, this trial and error process is unique for a 44” Epson printer. I have owned 4 of them going back to the Epson 10000 in 2002, and they were all flawless to operate right off the palette  with a wide variety of thicker fine art papers. I don’t recall ever dealing with head strikes issues. For reasons that Epson has never acknowledged and never remedied through firmware updates (assuming that would be possible), the 9570 has been a totally different experience.

[Remko]

Totally agree with Hubell.

I do appreciate the articles Dan is writing. They are informative and fun to read and I find Dan's opinion unbiased - and that is worth a lot.
Having said that it always surprised me somewhat that some articles begin with a topic that is not related to the title. Even if an update, e.g., is not enough for a long article, what is wrong with a small article that is informative AND easy to find? 😉

Cheers,
Remko

[John Hollenberg]

"I’m losing prints to scraping, and I’m working very closely with Epson on best practices to avoid it."

The printer was released over 2 years ago and it still doesn't work right!  If Epson could fix it with firmware, they would have done it by now.  Seems like the "best practice to avoid it" is to purchase a different printer.  That is what most on the forums who have experience with the printer are suggesting.  Dan's forthright statement about 70% success rate avoiding head strikes seals the deal for me--no go.

[samogitian]

Agreed. A 70% failure rate is unheard of and not something a user should struggle with. I am glad he is doing this article as it might knock some sense into Epson but something is seriously wrong with this printer family.

[hubell]

I haven't seen any updates. I wonder if Epson pulled the plug on what was supposed to be an "ongoing review"  because of the reported rate of flawed prints, which was not unexpected for anyone who has actually owned one of these printers. Mr. Wells' explanation that the issues with the 9570 he is encountering are just part of the learning curve with any bespoke process like dye transfer printing is, quite frankly, absurd. He has obviously never owned a large format printer. I have owned three such printers from Epson in the past...a 10000, a 9800 and a 9900. There was never a "learning curve" involved with these printers in order to make prints using thicker, fine art media without head strike issues. Apart from head clogs, these printers performed flawlessly for me with many heavier weight, thicker media from Epson, Canson and Hahnemuhle. That has not been the case with the 7570/9570 printers. Epson knows it, but will not acknowledge it, because there is no fix possible through a firmware update and either a physical change in the printer is not possible or Epson does not want to incur the cost of making the change on warranty.

[John Hollenberg]

Agreed. A 70% failure rate is unheard of and not something a user should struggle with. I am glad he is doing this article as it might knock some sense into Epson but something is seriously wrong with this printer family.

It is actually a 30% failure rate, and a 70% success rate but the point holds.

[John Hollenberg]

See also this thread for the opinion of Rand Scott Adams who has fought with this printer for the last couple of years.  He has already done the "long term testing" and found the printer wanting:

https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=142322.0

That should cure any desire to purchase this printer.

[John Hollenberg]

Still waiting for another update on the Epson 9570... but not holding my breath.  Dan has gone silent on this printer.

[hubell]

Still waiting for another update on the Epson 9570... but not holding my breath.  Dan has gone silent on this printer.

Often no news is good news. In this case, we actually know what no news signifies.

[Dan Wells]

I have been extremely busy, but am working on the (probably 10,000 word ) full review. The update is:

Overall: Stunning, perhaps even revolutionary (although not without issues).

The gamut, dynamic range and overall image quality are like nothing I have seen (oranges and greens from previous top Epson's, combined with Canon blues, with a little extra in the darkest tones that I haven't seen an inkjet do before. I don't have the equipment to measure numbers, but the numbers I've seen (20% or so higher than most other things) feel accurate from hundreds of prints on a variety of papers.

Much less clog-prone than ANY previous Epson (more like a Canon, but with Epson's advantages in print longevity).

Gloss differential and bronzing effectively eliminated (I asked Epson to send me their most challenging paper, have been printing on Metallic Glossy, it does a better job than a Canon Pro-2000, which has a Chroma Optimizer channel). Epson is slightly better WITHOUT a varnish channel than Canon is with. The Metallic paper looks like an old super-gloss Ilfochrome, with that liquid gloss.

Easiest paper feed system I've seen - I have a physical disability that takes out one hand, and just wouldn't be able to feed 44" rolls using a lot of systems - I can here.

Superb paper versatility - no more of "that printer is the best on Matte, but I prefer this one on Baryta". No ink switching at all. I  haven't yet found any paper on which I prefer the results from any other printer.

I've run into two issues.

One is the well-known head strike problem. I've gotten to where, by adjusting platen gap and a couple of other parameters and knowing the printer, paper and images, I pretty much never have a head strike (it's really head RUBBING, not a full on head strike) any more - but that wasn't an easy place to get to (and it DOES require adjustments, even on a per-print basis).  If I see a print with a large, deep shadow, I'll open up the platen gap by one setting over what I'd normally use. I can print pretty much anything by eye at this point - but it took a while to get there. I'll share a table of my favorite settings as a starting point to experiment from. It WILL require a bit of learning from each user.

The second is that the cutter will occasionally catch and cause a paper jam. I've had this problem twice in 200 or so prints, and I think the second one may have been my fault. After the first incident, I removed the cutter, cleaned it and reinstalled it (but did not replace it - it's a relatively inexpensive consumable). The second came in pretty quick succession after the first (about ten prints later), and I think the first may have damaged the cutter.

[samogitian]

Any chance there will be an update?

[kevinraber]

Just about all the issues that have been reported regarding the 7000 and 9000 series printers will be a thing of the past very soon. Epson is releasing a new Epson Media Installer that will work well with with third-party paper manufacturers.  While the interface, for this will be kind of clunky it will solve most of the issues everybody's been experiencing on these printers.  Epson is making videos to show how to do the settings, and I'll be doing a series of videos over at PhotoPXL in the very near future. I'll post more here when I have some links to share as well as over it PhotoPXL. Stay tuned.

[BAB]

mostly over engineered issues