Epson 7900 Read Before you buy

[Lukas]

Hi, Im working with Epson 7900 for 2 years and 7000 pages, and this is all things that I dont like at all (but yes to Epson company):

-Clogging very much (like almost every Epson printer), each 25 or 30 copies  (30x40 cm. size), I must do nozzle check and exact like a clock, always need to clean some nozzle (not always the same)
-The machine desn´t detect printing it is not ok and still printing with clog nozzle and waste paper and ink if you are not there for control this. The user can´t leave the printer working alone.
-The setting that Epson 7900 have for this issue is automatic (you can active or not) and cleaning every 2 or 3 copy. This setting is ¡¡¡TERRIBLE!!! for you $ and you time.
-The manual and more "ECONOMICAL" and simple setting cleaning process is (for pairs), but it doesn`t clean by pair. The 7900 take her own decision and clean all the colors in 90% of times. It take about 5-10 minutes. Too much time. And doesn´t continues with cycle if other not clog color is in (warning low level ink)
-The waste ink tank is full at 3 or 4 cleaning cycles, and it have 600 cl. of ink when says full tank. This ink cost is 240 euros (255 dollars aprox) plus 35 dollar if you dont reset the tank and buy one new.
-When the cleaning process finish, it tell us that need cleaning more. You must not ear this and stop the process.
-If you cancel print process without print, always cut about 3 inch of white paper in all modes of settings by rolls when the paper cut is active (you must change active cut and not active and no forget for avoid this, impossible in most of times), not on sheet mode.
-New firmware doesn´t improve this, I think that  it get worse.

I need know if some one have HP 3200 or Canon 6200 and what can tell me about this issues (The same or not, please write quantities and numbers of total pages-copies on your machine for make comparation). I will like ear you experience, because I´m thinking about change to other printer brand.

Thanks

[dgberg]

Hello Lukas.
I have 2 of these ink suckers but still really like them both.
My 7900 has about 620 prints and the 9900 about 400.
I do a nozzel check before every print job and end up doing a pairs clean on about half of these tests with the 9900. On my 7900 I only do a pairs clean on average 25% of the time or less. So yes it is still an issue.
ANC is off on mine if that is what you were refering to. If your waste tank is filling up like that ,time for a checkout if you plan on keeping this unit. I have only done 2 or 3 full blown cleans in the past year.
Sorry I do not have all the other issues you are having. 7000 prints is quite a few prints and really sounds like a service call is in order. Unless you are ready for a new printer. In that case you will find some very good deals in the marketplace.
Will have to let one of the experienced Canon or HP owners chime in with their comments.

[felix5616]

I have a Z3200 44" printer. It has NEVER clogged, even after 3 months of non use and it is extremely economical in terms of ink use. It lives in a very low humidity environment. I have had it for 2+ years and only wish HP made it in a 60" model.

[narikin]

I have a 64" Epson and a 44" Canon. The Epson was clogged completely in the Magenta nozzle within 48hrs of delivery, and needs constant nozzle checks to keep it clean. every time I print, and every few hours after that.  It is only 10 weeks old, and of course has only had Epson ink through it.

The Canon has never clogged. NEVER.

Canon have a great rebate on at the moment, with free inks and cash back.
take a serious look at the maths of that. It might be worth a little temporary pain to swap over.

[Peter McLennan]

This problem seems common to all Epson printers and unknown elsewhere.  Why can'' (or won't) Epson solve this? 

My 4800 has constant clogging issues if it's not used continuously.  Recently, after a perfect nozzle check, the magenta channel failed completely in the middle of a 17X30 inch print.  Subsequent "cleanings" resulted in increasingly bad nozzle checks to the point that I gave up and initiated a "Power Cleaning", a procedure that even Epson warns against because of its excess ink usage.

I'm getting really tired of replacing "Maintenance Tanks".

[hsmeets]

iPF 5100 user, almost 3 years in use.

Upside:
- no paper/print lost due to machine troubles like clogging
- ink tanks replaced mid print: prints okay, no artifacts
- experienced no issues with install/update of drivers (windows and OSX)
- experienced no issues with firmware updates or firmware crashing the printer
- print all though the photoshop plugin (so simple to use)
- no black ink switching which is a benefit to me as I can be swithing papers for each next print.
- as far as I'm concerned it's frugal with ink.

Downside:
- borderless printing: it enlarges the file a bit and you loose a few mm of image at the 4 borders. But can be taken care of at image preparing.
- no straight through paper path for more rigid material.
- depending on usage, environment, etc  sooner or later you might need to buy 2 new printheads that also will purge ink before replacing.
- canon slow in providing a 64b Photoshop plugin for OSX.
- Although I had no issues with the software (myself beeing an IT guy professionally) I see room for improvement here.

I'm a low volume user, i've the printer on standby all the time and it does some cleaning every 24 hrs. If I do not print for 2 or more weeks the printer will run a nozzle check - cleaning cycle taking sometime. Printing every 3 to 5 days and the printer will start printing directly. In standby the printer is dead silent.

Obviously the non clogging, like the HP, comes at the expense of having to buy new printheads some time in the future. But in my case that will still be cheaper then what the Epson was priced at when I bought the Canon and the ink used in cleaning by the epson.....

Hope this didn't sound too much as fan-boy-ism because I'm not. My next printer could well be an Epson or HP, just depends on what they have in the market, what they cost and how they perform.

[Mulis Pictus]

I have similar experience. My 7900 is also nearly 2 years old and it is clogging very often. It was serviced many times (6 or 8, stopped counting) and it was getting only worse. In last half year I was getting whole or most of channel drops and it became very unreliable. One has to babysit the printer carefully. The bad thing is that it happens even between following prints, so one sends 12 pages job (24x36" each) and it clogs or drops channel(s) after 8 pages and if you don't notice you loose a lot of material. I found out it usually happens when the printer is doing small cleaning (which cannot be switched off and is done automatically after few pages), and also when cleaning by pairs. I clean one pair and after it finishes one or more other channels clog or drop out. BTW, I stopped using ANC as it was unreliable. In EU the company can avoid replacing the machine by continuously doing repairs :-(

I bought Canon ipf8300 about half year ago, when the problems with Epson got too bad and so far, knock on wood, it works really nice and is very reliable. What a relief when you can just send out the print job and it starts printing in few seconds. Compared to first printing nozzle check on 7900 and then usually spending 10 to 30 minutes cleaning the machine. It happened to me once that the client came to pickup the prints just before the last 2 pages were printed and had to wait another hour because it clogged just at that time. Image quality wise they are quite comparable, each has its stronger and weaker areas. One thing I like on 7900 is roll handling which is very comfortable, but reliability is much more important to me.

Ah, and that black ink switching and frequent cleaning after that, which can use 20 or 30ml (compared to 1.5 or 3.5ml advertised ;-)) I stopped switching the black inks and use ipf8300 for glossy prints.

[feppe]

There have been claims that Epson's recent models clog less, but if this is "less," no thanks. I've read so many horror stories about Epson printers - not only clogs - that they won't even make the shortlist when it's time to finally buy a wide format printer.

-The waste ink tank is full at 3 or 4 cleaning cycles, and it have 600 cl. of ink when says full tank. This ink cost is 240 euros (255 dollars aprox) plus 35 dollar if you dont reset the tank and buy one new.

Not to add insult to injury, but 240 EUR is 318 USD.

[BobDavid]

Funny, I haven't had too many clogging issues with my 9900. I use it at least five days a week. I've gotten into the habbit of doing frequent nozzle checks. I don't know if  it's a coincidence or not, but over the past year I've switched over to Epson media almost exlusively, with the exception of Hahn Photo Rag Baryta. Maybe that has something to do with the minimal clogging that I've had. For what it's worth, I live in a humid climate -- Central Florida.

[tbonanno]

I haven't had an Epson wide format printer in awhile (other than a 3800 which I still use for small cut sheet), but I have had three Canon units in my studio.. the iPF5000, iPF6100, and since last May, the iPF6300.  I'm sold on the Canon models, especially the 6300.  Haven't seen any reason to go back to Epson.  With Canon, I'm very happy with the print quality, LOVE the Photoshop high-bit plug-in, don't ever worry about matte or photo black ink swapping, and NEVER have a clog.  The workflow is generally trouble free.  The user interface takes a little getting use to, not as intuitive as Epson or HP, but it is feature rich.  The 6300/8300 has a somewhat improved user interface and menu system. 

[jdsteele]

I've had a 7900 for about 10 months and a Z3200 44" for about two months.  They are both wonderful printers but I give an edge to the HP and I've been an Epson printer use for many years.

The HP never clogs, the driver is more sophisticated than Epson's however, the z3200 is MUCH SLOWER in print speed.  Paper loading and handling is a bit smoother in the Epson.  The built-in spectro on the HP is as close to perfect as I've ever seen.  The prints come as close to matching my monitor as I've ever seen and I use a fully calibrated workflow on my Epson.

Subjectively, there's a bit more "depth" to the HP prints.  I don't know how to objectively quantify that remark.

I don't know if HP still has the rebate deal, but I bought my 44" for $2795 and then got an $800 rebate from HP.  Not only did I get the rebate but HP sent me the check in a very short time.

Jim
www.photographybysteele.com

[Peter McLennan]

I don't know if HP still has the rebate deal, but I bought my 44" for $2795 and then got an $800 rebate from HP.  Not only did I get the rebate but HP sent me the check in a very short time.

Jim
www.photographybysteele.com

Jim, the HP Z3200 lists at $6155 according to

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/18972-18972-3328061-12600-3328079-3737540.html

Or am I confused about models?

Can you share the name of the vendor who sold you one for $2795?

[abiggs]

Ok, I have an iPF8300, an HP Z3200 44" and until a few weeks ago an Epson 9900. I sold the Epson because of a few reasons: 1) clogged nozzles and 2) long boot up or wakeup time. I love my Canon the most, and still want to love the Z3200 but for some reason it doesn't get there for me. The Z3200 prints do look extremely nice, but the printer is slow and I don't care for the rear-loading for the roll paper. I do find the quality of the Z3200 prints to be a little sharper than the 8300, but overall I find the 8300 easier to use.

[jdsteele]

There are two models of Z3200 printers.  Those that don't have Postscript and those that do.  There is a significant difference in price.  Mine does not have the Postscript option.  Atlex had them but I don't know if the offer has been extended from HP.  I think the list on mine was about $4700.

[mikev1]

I have tons of clogging as well. I print on this thing about 5 days a week now.

What kills me about the Epson 9900 is that you have to babysit it.

The wasted material always irks me.

And what I absolutely can't stand is the disruption to my workflow once a clog appears.  It can be a real headache and time waster to get going again. As Mulis mentioned, you do a clean and all of a sudden you have a new channel dropout.

I've found Epson support to be terrible.  The last two times I called I was promissed someone would call me back... never happened.

I'm seriously looking at the Canon right now.

[Wayne Fox]

My 7900, 1100 prints printed, haven't had a clog or seen a cleaning cycle triggered in at least 3 months.  have full auto cleaning enabled.

Canon's are great printers, but Canon dealer support is pathetic for these, so I won't stock them in my store.  And for those that say they haven't had a clog in their Canon printer, please study up on the technology.  You have had clogs, but you just aren't aware. Canon printers will waste ink on keeping nozzles clear (not neary as much as Epson), but has thousands of spare nozzles to use when others clog.

You won't be aware until the head runs out of spare nozzles for one of the colors, and you have to replace the head(s).  As with Epson printers, some are lucky and go a long time, others not so much. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's just a different head technology, but with current inks all brands of printers have to have some method of dealing with clogged nozzles, because they are frequent and unavoidable - Canon, Epson or HP.

I believe both technologies are viable and TCO on either is probably more similar than most think. However, you don't buy these printers to save money but to control quality, and in skilled hands both will produce outstanding prints - probably indistinguishable from each other except an expert with a loupe.  

For those that use their printers sporadically or switch between MK and PK frequently, the convenience of Canon's technology is a major factor to consider. Personally I prefer the perfectly straight paper path of the Epson printers for all media, and I also really like the roll feed mechanism of the Epson.

[mikev1]

No doubt the Epson has some advantages Wayne.  I think I'm at the point that I'll gladly pay for the new Canon print head when that time comes.  The downtime probably won't be anywhere near the cumulative down time I face with the Epson 9900.  The orders pile up pretty quickly when you are constantly cleaning the Epson.

I do a lot of switching between PK and MK which probably doesn't help matters.  I've been at the point for several months now where it probably makes sense to run two printers however I haven't pulled the trigger just yet as I've been weighing my options.

[abiggs]

Mike, that's actually a good observation. You could keep the 9900 and use it for medium and large sized cut sheets, or perhaps for a roll of paper that you always need ready to go. And a Canon 8300 for everything else.

[jdsteele]

One nice thing about the z3200 is separate plumbing for the two blacks.  There is NO waste when switching between matt and glossy papers.  OTOH, you do have a gloss enhancer on the HP that isn't on the Epson.  Doesn't appear to be necessary on the Epson.

[JeffKohn]

And for those that say they haven't had a clog in their Canon printer, please study up on the technology.  You have had clogs, but you just aren't aware. Canon printers will waste ink on keeping nozzles clear (not neary as much as Epson), but has thousands of spare nozzles to use when others clog.

While that's true, the fact is with the Canon approach you don't have to worry about kicking off a 30x20 print only to have it ruined by a clog, thus wasting time, ink, and paper. This seems far preferable to me than having to print a nozzle check before every print job, like so many Epson users find they have to do.