First cartridges replacement on Epson R3000

Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Why, do the other fade faster or damage the printer?
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They may print fine for a while but then you'll get a bad batch and destroy your heads. Even if the heads aren't clogged completely you may get banding, drop outs, zebra striping, fade outs, mismatched prints etc...it's just not worth it. I know Epson are supposed to honour warranty even with third party inks....yeah. Also, as you say, Chris all your media will need reprofiling.

Epson have also been known to slip up with bad ink. The difference is, they replaced all the heads in my printers due to some bad green ink because it was their ink.

I've used plenty of third party inks in the past. Mixed different inks from three different ink suppliers in the same printer, mainly due to the inkset I wanted to use wasn't available. There is always a problem.

Third party ink prices appear very attractive and are a lure, especially when you are going through over 100 litres a year now, as I do. I just don't switch, it's just not worth it.

I could replace several sets of heads a year with the savings I'd make using third party ink. The downtime, the reprofiling, the headaches and hassle. Always checking the gutter stripe wondering when a head will drop out..no thanks.
 
froyd said:
When I moved to the 3000 and it's larger cartridges it took me a year to wear to the fist colors (VLM and LLK...),
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Since I bought my R3000 two months ago I printed 26 sheets A4 mostly in B&W on glossy papaer. Now the carts PK and LK are almost empty while LLK, VLM and LC show about 60% ink.
I wonder if I am doing something wrong.
 
I've been told the initial set of ink cartridges get used up faster than the replacements. I guess because the initial set up needs to use more ink for the process.

I've been using an R3000 for almost a year and the ink usage is not excess in my opinion. It depends on the size of the paper used and the colors and darkness of the images, of course. One thing to remember: don't jump in and change the cartridge when the low ink warning light appears. There's still a lot of ink in that cartridge. When it runs dry, the printer will pause printing and allow you to change the cartridge and then resume printing with no loss in quality. You can save ink by not frequently switching back and forth between glossy/semi-glossy papers and matte papers.

Be careful of third party inks. Somewhere on the Wilhelm Institute website (http://wilhelm-research.com/index.html), there's an article on tests done of several third party inks that showed all the tested inks were inferior in fade resistance. I'm sure there are good to excellent third party inks available but I've decided to stick with the expensive Epson inks.
 
Dogman said:
I One thing to remember: don't jump in and change the cartridge when the low ink warning light appears. There's still a lot of ink in that cartridge. When it runs dry, the printer will pause printing and allow you to change the cartridge and then resume printing with no loss in quality.
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Great news, thank you!
 
luibargi said:
Since I bought my R3000 two months ago I printed 26 sheets A4 mostly in B&W on glossy papaer. Now the carts PK and LK are almost empty while LLK, VLM and LC show about 60% ink.
I wonder if I am doing something wrong.
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It sounds strange: I have printed about fifty sheets A4 bw with the initial ink set in thirteen months and now is running only photo black cartridge.
 
You can save a lot of ink with an Epson by not running unnecessary auto cleaning cycles. They seem to consume large amounts of ink from each cart.

1) don't turn your printer off. It will automatically run a cleaning cycle every time you turn it on. I have had two Epson printers powered up for at least ten years and can find no reason to turn them off.

2) if you need to change one ink cartridge because the printer stops with an empty cart and you have another that is very low, change them both. Otherwise the auto clean cycle when you replace the first one will then empty the second one and require another auto clean cycle.

3) if you have a very low cartridge and know your printer will do an auto clean cycle because you have not used it for several weeks, change the cartridge first. That saves double cleaning cycles.

4) the obvious one: do not switch between MK and PK inks unnecessarily. If you must switch, replace any very low carts at the same time.

5) other than the above, do not switch carts simply because they are indicated as low. Be confident that the printer will come to a complete halt automatically with ink left in the cart.
 
Thanks for those tips, Bob.

I have had the R3000 for about a month.

I have only made b&w glossy ink prints, but my vivid light magenta and light cyan are as low as my light light black, light black, and photo black inks at around 30%. So the tips on ink management are appreciated.

I love the print quality from this fine machine.
 
I have tested MANY inks over the years, including Epson UltraChrome, Claria, and DuraBrite, as well as a wide range of third-party inks available on the market. The purpose of my testing has been to check and compare color match, output quality, flow/clogging, fade resistance and costs. I have found that you get what you pay for, so the dirt cheap inks (that I found came with very little to no information) were often problematic and either had flow/clogging issues, bad color match or glossy compatibility, and/or faded quickly. Researching and finding a company that really knows what they're doing, USES their products and offers helpful information and support is just as important as finding a good ink. I would be happy to share my findings and recommendations if you shoot me a private message.
 
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