epson printers on amd64

[David Southwell]

On Sunday 20 November 2011 10:03:06 Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> On 11/20/2011 12:14 AM, David Southwell wrote:
> > On Sunday 20 November 2011 01:55:18 perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> >> Warren Block<wblock at wonkity.com>  wrote:
> >>> On Sat, 19 Nov 2011, David Southwell wrote:
> >>>> Anyone up to date on how to do high quality printing with
> >>>> epson inkjet printers (in my case r2400 and r2880) on amd64
> >>>> systems.  print/pips* reports they require 386 and do not
> >>>> compile on amd64.
> >>> 
> >>> print/gimp-gutenprint works pretty well from Gimp, although
> >>> I have not figured out how to get consistent color and brightness.
> >>> It supports both of those printers.
> >> 
> >> I'm sure I'm not alone in doubting that _any_ ink-spitter is likely to
> >> produce "high quality printing" or "consistent color and brightness",
> >> regardless of the host support used.  Those printers are designed to
> >> be manufactured as inexpensively as possible so as to be sold at very
> >> low prices, the profit being in the recurring ink sales.  "Cheap" and
> >> "high quality" tend to be incompatible design goals.
> 
> Every printer out there is designed to be used in a business model where
> the profits are in recurring consumables sales.
> 
> > Not so with epson 2400 and 2880 when properly profiled these professional
> > printers produce salon quality prints and are not in any way comparable
> > with inexpensive consumer "inkspitter" models - I think you are right as
> > far as more economically priced printers are concerned. I have many
> > prints produced on epson 2400, 2880&  larger epson printers accepted
> > into international salons and received awards.
> 
> I have a cheaper Epson inkjet myself that uses the same ink setup as the
> more expensive ones your referring to and produces similar quality
> photos.  The main difference between it and the more expensive inkjets
> is the paper control, in the better printers the paper is much more
> securely held and less likely to slip during printing.
> 
> However, despite the fact that inkjets can be manufactured to produce
> excellent output, the caveat is that it is all in the ink.  You cannot
> get high quality output from an inkjet with standard water-soluble
> inks, that's why the epson output is so good, because they use
> petroleum-based inks.  However, the oil based inks WILL clog the
> printhead unless the printer is used frequently.  The industry
> experimented with wax-based inks for a while, those also produce
> excellent output, but the printers also will clog unless they are
> used every day.  I myself buy aftermarket water-soluble ink cartridges
> that are a drop-in replacement for the Epson cartridges, and do
> not clog, and are much cheaper.  Print quality is lower, though.

The alternative to cartridges is to use a high quality inkflow system. I agree 
the quality of the ink is really significant. If you want to get the best 
results then use pigment inks.

> 
> These printers are totally unsuitable for the average consumer who just
> wants to print a picture once every few months.  Furthermore the
> cost-per-page is far higher than the current crop of inexpensive
> color laserjet printers, that is due to Epson using very small ink
> cartridges.  Epson does that because larger cartridges have more mass
> and more mass has more inertia and is harder to control.


Again the inkflow systems reduce the mass. I have solve the tendency for 
nozzle blockages by adding 2% proproponol to my bulk pigment ink supplies. The 
cost of high quality ink bought in bulk using an ink flow system gives me a 
reduction of 80% of the cost of Epson Cartridges plus a much longer print head 
life and a quality that is at least equal to using epson cartridges.
> 
> Getting back to the original question, if your going to drop $500 into
> a professional quality inkjet and at least that every year into
> consumables for it in order to print pro-quality pictures on a regular
> basis, then setup an older extra 32-bit Intel-based PC as a print server
> and send Postscript jobs to it over the network, and have it
> convert them to whatever language the printer uses.
> 
I agree that would be a solution but a more sensible, and less energy 
consuming alternative would be  a 64bit compliant driver! It is nuts not to 
have one! <chuckles>

david