Printer consolidation!

InkjetMall Customer Support Piezography Inks & Printing
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Hi, after moving i have limited space to put my 2 4800 printers.

I thinking of replacing them with 1 3880. I wish to be able to print colour, but mainly for piezography using both special edition and carbon ink sets, and sometime in the future digital negatives.

My thinking behind this that with the 3880 changing cartridges uses up less ink that 4800, so swapping out inks set will be easier and less expensive.

I was also wondering if special edition and carbon ink sets could be installed in 3880, possible 4900, at same time?

I know the 3880 does not have roll facilities, but have seen hacks that enable the use of roll paper, i have roll bar and holder from a 4800 i broke so should be able to get roll printing working on 3880.

Any thoughts?

thanks

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I’ve just setup my 3880 running piezography. It’s taken a while to get the yellow of of the shade 7 ink. I don’t think it’s feasible to switch back and forth. I’d recommend a second printer. Maybe a smaller 13x19 printer for either color or b&w.

The 3880 does not do well with pre cut roll paper. I have trouble getting it flat enough not to get head strikes on the tail end. If you leave large margins the issue mostly goes away. Maybe feeding through and cutting after the fact like the P800 does would work better.

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Not in a 3880. If you were to run P2/K6 and only print on matte (so no GO), then you need 6 channels for K6 neutral, and four more channels for Shades 2,3,4,5 Spec Edition (Shades 1 & 6 are the same), and you have ten channels in a 4900 as I understand it, so I guess it’s possible. Given that there’s a switchable black, you could probably run gloss as well, provided that you had another printer for the GO coat. Of course the P2/K6 Spec Edit curves would all have to be remapped.

Piezography Pro is rumoured to be being released soon, and my understanding is that it will enable two inksets.

I find that leaving an extra 40mm at either end works well enough. On printers with a roll paper option, the Epson drive will leave this much or more at the beginning anyway, so compared to that, you’re only losing an extra 40mm at the end. When I do this I don’t have problems with head strikes. There is however a skill in not putting small kinks in the paper from all the handling, and for some reason, these always end up in the sky areas. Certain forms of mounting will help deal with these.

One thing to avoid is printing with a RIP like Colorburst Overdrive (for colour work, not Piezo), as it wants to print the white of the leading and trailing edge, which pretty much guarantees head strikes from the paper curl. QTR, Mirage, Printfab and I assume ImagePrint are ok.

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Thanks for replies, the pro option looks interesting!