3880 ink cost per page

Do you have the ink cost per page for K7 on a 3880 for both Type 2 and Type 5 papers?

Hmmm… this is a tricky one!

There are a lot of factors that would determine/effect this, mostly the paper size and image size, but also print speed and resolution. Different printer models use different Piezography ink limits, so this will also effect the results from printer to printer. Unless you print purge sheets that use equal amounts of ink from each channel, the cartridge ink levels will go down at different rates.

To determine a general cost/print, I suggest you start with a set of full carts (70ml ink per cart), then keep track of all the prints you make (I think it would be best to track the square inch image area, as images sizes vary), as well as the cleaning cycles you do. Then, after a cart is low and needs to be refilled (or really at any point after making several prints and the ink levels have gone down I suppose), measure ink remaining in each cart (or guesstimate, depending on how exact you want to be) to determine ink used, divided by the total square inches of image area printed and number of cleaning cycles done…

I hope this helps.
Best regards and happy printing~ Dana :slight_smile:

I was hoping to get a guestimate. All I was looking for was a generic number, and I can take it from there. I don’t have the time to run down the ink. In a perfect world, not accounting for purging or wasted ink, mid-range toned images, what do you think the cost would be per square inch on a 3880.

Mark Segal did an analysis on Luminous Landscape that’s interesting. It’s for the 3800 and a few years out of date (2008) but gives you a starting point.

Here’s the link: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/3800-costs.shtml

Dave

Thanks Dave for the link, it was interesting. However I believe K7 inks with the Type 5 paper curves will be quite different.

Dana, a best guess would really help…

bbc5, Am not surprised that one would not want to give a cost, considering that no one has any idea what you will be printing. However, if you look at the luminous-landscape article, and then the red river analysis, several things should be easy to figure. Assume roughly 20% loss from non-printing. Assume that the cost will increase for the same print as the gloss goes down. Translate the known cost for Epson ink into the Cone cost (depending on the ink size you are buying)…and then look at what you are printing, and you should be able to get within around 10% of the real world costs.

PS: Was joking about it being easy.

It should be noted that the type of image has more effect on cost than any other aspect. From the glossiest to the dullest paper is something around 25% (less needed for the glossy). In actual fact, the amount of adjustment a 3880 can make is in that range. However, I print mostly extremely saturated images, and my average cost is just over twice that of those estimated costs.

Also, don’t forget that the print status report will give you ok numbers, if you print are reasonable number of prints…so you don’t actually have to spend a lot of time to get good infor.

As it turns out, the 3880 has a job report that lists the ink usage for each print job. This ink usage is exactly what I was looking for.

Perfect! :slight_smile:

Thank you all for the help…

I’m not sure if you were still interested but in case anyone is, this is an interesting evaluation Red River Paper did of the 3800 vs the 3880 ink costs.

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-of-inkjet-printing-epson-3800-3880.html

Dave

This is interesting, thanks for sharing Dave.

We recently did a quick test with a R2880 to determine the number of prints per set of carts. We started with a full set of Piezography carts (about 15ml of ink in each cart), and printed an 8x10 gradient on 8.5x11 paper, using the 3880-MPS-Type5 curve at 2880dpi and uni-directional speed (best quality print settings). I see Red River printed @ 1440dpi thru the Epson driver, so the resolution and printer driver differ in our tests, and effect the results. For the seven Piezography shades used in printing= 105ml of ink total, we got 50 prints before the printer indicated a cart was empty (though some still had quite a bit of ink remaining). Figuring $.46 per ml (based on a 110ml bottle), this equals less than $1 per print. We were able to coat 16 of these sheets with GO from the 15ml cart (equals about $.43 per sheet to print GO).

Matte/rag printing will be slightly fewer prints per set of carts, since the matte/rag curves have higher ink limits than gloss curves, but don’t require the GO coating.

This can be transferred to other K3 printer models, which use the same curves.

I hope this is helpful, best regards and happy printing~ Dana :slight_smile: