I bought a brand new 3880 two weeks ago specifically to put Jon Cone glossy Piezo inks in. Without going into a lot of miserable detail (trying every combination of settings in both back manual and front manual load to make these inks work with this printer I have come to the conclusion that rear manual load is not a viable option because of the pizza wheel marks (ink image layer is not really "dry" until the second layer of gloss optimizer is applied. When both these layers of printed inks go under the pizza wheels they get wheel marks on prints that have mid and darker smooth areas of tone. Thus the remaining option is front load which is problematic in itself when printing on fiber bases fine art papers (glossy). First and foremost the front load images, while not having pizza wheel marks, are never as finely detailed as rear manual load due the fact that alignment is done using read loading only. I've tried putting the paper on 2 ply matte board as per Eric Chan's suggestion but prints with very fine details still don't have that fine dot placement as manual back load does. There are also other issues with putting rag fine art papers on 2 ply board with front load because I've had the paper buckle up just a little, catch on the printer parts, or print head...have the head knocked waaayyy out of line, etc...The front load is really designed to thick media and anything else creates issues with print quality or damage to my brand new printer.
I finally put the epson inks back in the printer but at some point would like the try the Piezography glossy inks again if I can find a solution with the 3880. ANY suggestions would be really welcome!! Thanks! Eleanor