What's the latest on disk printers

eyethoughtso wrote on 4/28/2007, 9:07 PM

I was window shopping for a disk printer. This week I was at a friend's house and saw that he had an Epson disk printer. The quality was disturbing (politely put). It looked as if it needed to be calibrated, aligned, cleaned, burped, anything that would make it appear better, needed to be tried. Today I was at a computer fair and only saw Epsons being displayed at the stands. The quality of those displayed disks also seemed to be smudged. A slight blur at best.
I read in older threads about using labels and the perils involved. So, I thought I'd ask you pros what you are using. The exceptionally fine glossy labels, or is there a better printer for printable disks?

Jeff

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Comments

DGates wrote on 4/29/2007, 9:25 PM

I think Riredale meant to say that Discmakers will send you a printable disc, so you can print a sample yourself on your own printer. At least that's what they did for me.

Coursedesign wrote on 4/29/2007, 11:08 PM

Epson printers need to be used regularly, or you'll get expensive (or painful) head clogs.

Other printers are far less sensitive.

The latest Canon and HP professional printers have some amazing intelligence to avoid these problems, so that when a clogged nozzle is sensed, it just reconfigures another nearby nozzle to do equivalent squirting instead, and then it schedules a cleaning cycle for the clogged nozzle when convenient.

farss wrote on 4/30/2007, 2:06 AM

Just a small tip.
If you dig around you can get nozzle cleaning kits for the Epson printers. The only supplier I know of is in Aus so a link wouldn't help most much. This device will only work on Epson models that use a separate tank per colour.
All the kit contains is a syringe with a fitting so it fits into the hole the tank feeds into and a bottle of cleaning fluid.
I've never had a major head clog and therefore never tried these gizmos but the local seller is a pretty serious graphics supply house so hopefully they're not selling duds.

Bob.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/30/2007, 6:58 AM

Epson printers need to be used regularly, or you'll get expensive (or painful) head clogs.

Yes, that's a major downer. But I know some people who have had epson printers for years (10+) and have NO problems with them, printing every day. They even swap out cart's for different print jobs no problem.

riredale wrote on 4/30/2007, 8:43 AM

Perhaps so, but our experience was quite different. I bought the C80 originally because of the substantial virtues of pigment ink. I shared the printer with my daughter for her high school work, so it was used often, certainly every couple of days. We used only Epson ink in the printer.

Nonetheless, after about a year of trouble-free service it began to clog nozzles. We would run a cleaning cycle (which, incidentally, uses a tremendous amount of ink) and all would be well. Then, a month later, another clogged nozzle.

Finally I gave up and bought the successor, a C84. After a year or so it, too, had problems, so we migrated on to the C86, then another C86, and finally a C88.

Then last fall I read about the IP3000 and its disk-printing ability, and bought a cheap one of eBay, followed by another from eBay a few months ago. The Epson printers have gone to Goodwill.

If it hadn't been for the nozzle clogs we'd still have Epson. I really liked the printer, and it printed many, many waterproof CD and DVD labels for me over the years.

DGates:

Actually, Diskmakers sent me two WaterShield disks, one with vibrant color printing and a blank CD, which I tested in the IP3000.