Best printer for not clogging?

I have an Epson Stylus Photo 820, which produces excellent prints but is otherwise a horrible printer, using ink at a very high rate, and the nozzles clog if you don't use the printer for a few weeks, which means using up more ink in unclogging them. I'm ready for a chance. I don't use the photo printer very often (I have a mono laser for routine printing), so I would like one that (a) has jets that don't clog very readily if the printer is not used for several weeks, and is (b) more frugal with ink. The stores around here have very good buys on Canons (6320 and 6600), the cost of the printer being almost the same as a set of ink cartridges, but I don't know it I would be much better off with one of these. I know that HP printers have the jets included in the cartridge, so that every time you change the cartridge you change the jets, but I don't know if that means less frequent clogging or just that you start off with truly clean jets when you change cartridges. I also know that color lasers (which are getting to be affordable) by their nature don't have a clogging problem, but I understand that the inexpensive ones don't have real photo quality.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Bob

In general, HP inkjets get better reviews re: clogging, since when you change inks, you are also changing the printheads.

Pegleg

NOT TRUE for the HP DesignJets anyway. They have user replaceable print heads. I own the DJ130, a 24" version, and it is an amazing dye based archival printer that has never clogged or required a head cleaning in over two years. My 130 sits for weeks at a time between useage. I just turn it on and it prints flawlessly.

In fact, HP recommends replacing the heads about every three complete ink cart changes. I'm on my third set and so far have not noticed a decline in image quality.

I know the buzz right now is pigment printers but if you don't need to print on various off the shelf papers, if you can live with a photo gloss or satin photo; the DJ series is still the best deal going for archival fine art prints IMO.
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BigPixel / Hawaii

I have run seven 24"x50' rolls of HP PP satin Photo through this printer, maybe 10 boxes of 13"x19" matt & gloss. That's around 1000 sq feet of media, almost three sets of ink, hundreds of prints. Not one clog and no need to swap out the heads yet.

And this printer sips ink as you can tell if you do the math on the above. My total material cost for a 24"x36" color print on archival HP PP Satin Photo is $8.

Your mileage WILL NOT vary. (wink)
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BigPixel / Hawaii

I'll add to this---I just bought the 9180 for B&W work but it also has user replaceable printheads(4 of them) and that was of primary concern to me even though it took 3 machines to get one that worked. Stuff happens, I guess.

that said I own the dj30 and have no intentions of getting rid of it, plus I like the satin finsh. Not one problem. Will keep it to do color. Sits there for a week at a time and then prints right away. If you don't do B&W the designjet serious is the most frugal and depenable on the market---ron s.(imho)
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Design jet series, not DJ serious--gheez some of the errors when writing post and then dependable not depen--oh well you get the idea---ron s.

ron_9 said:

I'll add to this---I just bought the 9180 for B&W work but it also
has user replaceable printheads(4 of them) and that was of primary
concern to me even though it took 3 machines to get one that
worked. Stuff happens, I guess.
that said I own the dj30 and have no intentions of getting rid of
it, plus I like the satin finsh. Not one problem. Will keep it to
do color. Sits there for a week at a time and then prints right
away. If you don't do B&W the designjet serious is the most frugal
and depenable on the market---ron s.(imho)
--
Keeping it sane in an insane world is an inconvenience at an
inconvenient time!!
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Click to expand...

--
Keeping it sane in an insane world is an inconvenience at an inconvenient time!!
http://www.pbase.com/ron9ron

HP printers with heads in the cartridge rest the heads on a moist pad and don’t clog. I had an older model that I left unplugged with the ink cartridge installed and half empty for a couple of years. Someone needed an emergency printer and it worked perfectly after all that time. No way a Canon or Epson would do that. I have no idea how the HPs with separate heads do though.

If you remember to do a nozzle check after a week of not printing color they will all stay clog free. I do that with my Canons and haven’t had any problems. The nozzle check on Canons uses very little ink.

slipe said:

If you remember to do a nozzle check after a week of not printing
color they will all stay clog free.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion, but..a nozzle check every single week...52 times a year?? I'm sure it would work, but that's not for me. It's the sort of thing I'd like to avoid! Now, if you said to do a nozzle check every couple of months, that I could handle. I have most of my prints done at Costco, which is cheaper than doing it at home, especially with ink-guzzling the Epson 820. The printing I do at home is very occasional; that's why I'm looking for a printer that does not clog up even if nothing is done with it for several weeks.

Bob

I may as well chime in. I too have a DesignJet (90) and HP 8750 and they have performed flawlessly in the year and half to two years I’ve had them. I use the DJ for color work and the 8750 for black and white. Although tempted to get a pigment ink printer so I would have the option of printing on watercolor and canvas, I’ve been afraid of maintenance problems with them since I would be infrequently printing on such papers.

I like the HP satin very much and printing on satin or semi-luster is not pigment inks long-suit that’s why I prefer dye ink and, thanks to HP, I don’t have to give up color fastness.

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Sonny

HP8750 for up to A3+, occasional printing, fade resist up to 115 years, prints are NOT waterproof though, and you are limited to only two or three papers if you want maximum fade resistance. It's also a top B&W printer, so you've got best of all worlds. All printers are going to have different compromises, but I reckon this would be best for the needs you describe.
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Chris

Sorry Linford, must have crossed your post. But looks like you have a similar belief!
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Chris

Chris, you are absolutely right on the mark. The 8750 is a very good photo printer for both color and B&W; it is my good fortune that the papers I’m limited to give excellent results. The last I heard, though, the 8750 are getting hard to find.

The original poster would be happy with the non-clogging and the wonderful prints on glossy and satin papers. As far as water resistance, it is a fact that ink will run using the HP ink-paper combination and water gets on it. This can be completely eliminated when printing on Kodak paper but I’m not sure how much of the color fastness is lost.

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Sonny

Hi Linford or is it Sonny? I think the only Kodak paper which is swellable is the Ultima Picture Paper, but I might be a bit behind times! I think they stopped making it also. If the paper you are using is waterproof then it probably isn't very light resistant I'm afraid.
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Chris

The HP8050 series printer using the 99&97 cartridges still are the most worry free printer. The disposable print head is really maintenance free.

Biu

Linford L. Richardson said:

Chris, you are absolutely right on the mark. The 8750 is a very
good photo printer for both color and B&W; it is my good fortune
that the papers I’m limited to give excellent results. The last I
heard, though, the 8750 are getting hard to find.

The original poster would be happy with the non-clogging and the
wonderful prints on glossy and satin papers. As far as water
resistance, it is a fact that ink will run using the HP ink-paper
combination and water gets on it. This can be completely eliminated
when printing on Kodak paper but I’m not sure how much of the color
fastness is lost.

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Sonny

Click to expand...

http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/printers/photosmart_printers/1/storefronts/Q5747A%2523ABA

Linford L. Richardson wrote:
. The last I heard, though, the 8750 are getting hard to find.

--
Keeping it sane in an insane world is an inconvenience at an inconvenient time!!
http://www.pbase.com/ron9ron

Best way to avoid clogging is not to use inkjet. I have never owned an inkjet that didn't have banding or clogging issues eventually. It's the dirty little secret of the inkjet photoprinting industry - printers keep getting better, but the underlying problems never go away.

Answer: Dye-sub

Alas, most of them were about printers with much higher quality levels and prices than I was looking for. (I should have known that people who frequent this forum are serious about printing.)

However, the positive mentions of Canon printers fit in with what I was thinking about, and I've bought a Canon Pixma printer. This one is just about as low-end as you can get: an iP2200, which was available at a local computer-discounter store for CN$38.99. It included the C-40/C41 ink/print head combo, which sells for $62.99 at Best Buy, so I figure they're paying me $24 to use the printer! As far as I can tell, the print engine is the same in this model as in the more expensive ones that have an LCD viewer and memory card readers, which I don't need, and which take up more desk space, which I don't have to spare. (I know that there are more sophisticated high-end models from Canon as well.) I tried printing on glossy paper, using Photoshop CS2, and the results were very good, better than my Epson Stylus Photo 820, and even the color were similar to what I saw on the screen. Indications are that the Canon is not as much of an ink-guzzler as the Canon, and seems less prone to clogging.

In any case, at this price, I can't lose. When the printer runs out of ink, I'll buy another printer. They actually had another model, the iP1600, which was only CN$32.00, and which has the same ink combo. This is a little more than half the price of the ink bought by itself. There must be something wrong with the business model that results in this sort of pricing...

Bob

Robert Deutsch said:

In any case, at this price, I can't lose. When the printer runs
out of ink, I'll buy another printer. They actually had another
model, the iP1600, which was only CN$32.00, and which has the same
ink combo. This is a little more than half the price of the ink
bought by itself. There must be something wrong with the business
model that results in this sort of pricing...

Bob

Click to expand...

Not really. Printer mfgs realize that you will ultimately spend 10 to 100 times your printer cost on consumables over time. Printers are often sold at a net loss to hook you into the far more profitable consumables, especially ink. Colored water by and large, some with a little pigment added these days....I oversimplify with tongue firmly planted in cheek but essentially that's why you can buy a printer for $40 or in my case, an incredibly fine 24" archival printer for under $1300. Ive easily spent twice that amount the past two years on paper and ink.

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BigPixel / Hawaii

BigPixel said:

Robert Deutsch said:

In any case, at this price, I can't lose. When the printer runs
out of ink, I'll buy another printer. They actually had another
model, the iP1600, which was only CN$32.00, and which has the same
ink combo. This is a little more than half the price of the ink
bought by itself. There must be something wrong with the business
model that results in this sort of pricing...

Bob

Click to expand...

Not really. Printer mfgs realize that you will ultimately spend 10
to 100 times your printer cost on consumables over time. Printers
are often sold at a net loss to hook you into the far more
profitable consumables, especially ink. Colored water by and large,
some with a little pigment added these days....I oversimplify with
tongue firmly planted in cheek but essentially that's why you can
buy a printer for $40 or in my case, an incredibly fine 24"
archival printer for under $1300. Ive easily spent twice that
amount the past two years on paper and ink.

Click to expand...

I understand that. I've been told that, for example, Hewlett-Packard derives more of its profits from sales of printer consumables than the rest of its business combined. I can see the strategy of selling printers at a very low price (less than its manufacturing cost) to "hook" people. But selling a printer with ink for substantially less than the selling price of the ink itself?? Don't they think people will wise up to this and just buy new printers every time they run out of ink? That's what I intend to do, and will end up throwing out a perfectly good printer. It's a real waste... It would seem more sensible to sell printers at a modest markup, and consumables, especially ink (paper doesn't seem so bad until you get into the "special" papers) at a similar markup.

Bob

It's not good to let any printer sit for weeks or months at a time without using it, need to keep the ink flowing so internals don't dry up. I can't say from experience but I've heard Epsons are notorious for ink clogs if you don't use them regularly. Canons are generally pretty reliable and I'm sure most HPs are too with clogging. If printing a nozzle check sheet once every other week is too much work, then by gosh you're just lazy j/k. On my Canon this takes about a whole ten seconds and I do it about once a week if I havn't printed any photos.
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