Is P2 "supported" on the 3800/3880?

InkjetMall Customer Support Piezography Inks & Printing
1

I have a question. Is P2 supported by IJM on the 3800/3880?

I ask because I’ve been contacted by a prospective Piezography user who apparently has been told by IJM that it isn’t. This prospective user read a series of articles on my blog about B&W printing and Piezography, including the one that strongly advocates P2, they asked IJM about it, and then contacted me.

I know that you don’t market P2 for these two printers, because you don’t believe that it’s necessary. But as we’ve discussed before, there are advantages, and you agreed that it would prevent any issues with the MK/PK black ink exchanger and prevent problems of residual yellow staining in a conversion.

If someone did install P2 in the 3800/3880, they would be doing exactly the same thing as any owner of one of the P2-supported printers (R2400, R2880, 4800, 4800, 7800/9800 and 7880/9880), by putting photo shade 1 (SEL-1 or NU-1) in the yellow slot and using the existing x880 P2 curves. The only thing that’s different to the standard IJM approach is they would presumably be putting flush in the unused PK cart and not doing the MK/PK swap. But in all other respects their proposed use of P2 is totally standard and identical to “regular” P2 users. Why would you not support this?

I did wonder if there is a crossed wire here somewhere. As you know, I’m using P2 in an R1900 using remapped curves, and the same for JeffG in his R2000. But there’s no curve remapping at all for the 3800/3880. It’s totally standard P2.

If it isn’t just a crossed wire, and if it really isn’t supported, then my questions are: Why not? And what on earth does “not supported” mean? You won’t supply custom curves? You won’t help people diagnose printing problems? Ink problems? Linearisation problems? Clogging problems? In what way would it not be supported?

2

We use P2 on five 3880s in our Piezography workshops now. We started by using K7. The 3880 supports push button black ink changes. But, they take a few minutes and in a workshop that can seem like hours. So for convenience, we go P2 in the workshops and the matte black and photo black are changed just by media selection (.quad). Technically, P2 will work in any 8 ink printer. So, yes on all the models it could be. And we do sell a lot of them - just not so much officially as in one click buying. We do plan to introduce P2 systems for these printers as a one click buying option on InkjetMall.

Currently, we don’t offer them as such. And by that I mean “supported”. Further, our curves libraries are limited. So by that I mean supported. As in fully supported. Right now we are limited in our support with just the really popular papers.

But yes of course we support everything we sell, in the sense that you’re thinking.

3

That’s good to hear and makes perfect sense. You had previously said that you used P2 on the 3880s in the workshops as a convenience, but I had forgotten. I’ll contact you off-forum about this prospective user.

4

Thanks Brian, I appreciate that.

5

So that includes the R1900/R2000? :wink:

6

It includes any QTR supported printer with 8 or more ink channels - so yes - and even the 4900 / 7900 / 9900 can be set up that way - and especially those last three with two permanently clogged channels. They can be repurposed. We repurpose printers like that which some of our customers get for free (saving them from a life of being boat anchors!)