Digital BW, The Print

Greg wrote:

> And because they are tanks that will probably continue to print long 
> after some of the newer models fail. The easy head replacement on the 
> HP Z series would be way better for a big commercial place where time 
> is money, and down time costs a lot.


Greg,

The two printers can not be compared in any environment. 
Whether the Z3100 is used day in day out or stays idle for 
three weeks the moment you start it up it will print and no 
heads have been replaced on the one here in the 18 months of 
intermittent use. I still have a 9000 quad and a 10000 and I 
am very familiar with their behaviour.

The actual tank in the Epson family is the 10000 but when it 
gets in trouble you face costs like replacing a head of 
about a 1000 $ (but here the costs are more like 1200 Euro). 
There's one in that state here now. There's no printer as 
easy to repair as the 9000 but it is also one that needs 
more maintenance. Easy except the aligning of two heads 
instead of one on the more recent models.

I have followed this thread for a time and thought the 7000 
up to 9500 were almost made holy in the discussion. I do not 
share that feeling and think that if someone needs a 
secondhand model he may be better off with more recent 
single head models like the 7600 9600 as long as heads etc 
are available directly from the distributors. Epson changed 
its policy on any part purchase in the US.

It is that I have quad prints on the wall of both the Z3100 
and the 9000 and though I like the 9000 ones as much there's 
a definite difference. Smoothness, detail and Dmax are all 
better on the new printer. The 9000 was driven by QTR on its 
highest resolution. The Z3100 total 4000 nozzle number on 
the 4 quad heads is the reason for that, Joe of Bowhaus has 
it right. It is more than two years ago that I suggested to 
use more heads for BO printing on Epson desktop models as it 
forced the printer to smaller droplets and more nozzles, the 
HP and Canon models showed that that idea can be stretched 
even further.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,  Ernst


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