Epson R2880, CIS or Epson ink?

[paul_duncan2]

<p>I recently purchased an Eson R2880 printer to print B&W and colour photo's. Epson ink is very expensive, so have been looking at various continuous in systems which are a lot more cost effective. There are many opinions on how good or bad they are and I would appreciate opinions from 'owners' of this printer in using a CIS and if you do, which system you use and why. The efillink system seems to be very good but before I go the CIS route, I would like to be as certain as possible that this is the right thing to do. Thanks in advance for your input.</p>

[ed_lusthoff]

<p><strong>USE EPSON INK ONLY!</strong> 3RD PARTY INKS WILL EVENTUALLY CLOG AND DESTROY YOUR PRINTHEAD. TRY ALTEX.COM OR RED RIVER.COM TO GET EPSON INK TANKS FOR A DECENT PRICE. I THINK RED RIVER IS 12.90, ALTEX.COM IS AROUND 11.00 SOMETHING. I LEARNED MY LESSON AFTER HAVING TO REPLACE THE PH. YOUR NOT SAVING ANYTHING.</p>

[Jeremy Stein]

<p>Ed means Atlex.com. I use only Epson genuine inks and cartridges, since the ink is not the most expensive part of my printing; the paper costs more than the ink! In any case, if you sell your work, price it to cover your costs and your profit.</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>My advice;</p>

<p>If you have a below 2200 printer model, you do this for fun, not selling your print and its a hobby only, go with whatever you can afford, menaing a CIS and just know that s*** can append or not depending where you bought it, how your use it etc....</p>

<p>If you have a 2200 and up model, like your 2880 it will be insane to put anything else than epson ink in it, amateur or not, selling those print or not. If you cant afford to run it, sale it and get a 200$ model with a CIS.</p>

[ed_lusthoff]

<p>Thanks Jeremy. I haven't worked the arthritis out of my hand yet this morning. :>)</p>

[roger_smith4]

<p>If you're not printing a lot I have heard CIS can have problems with air bubbles and reliability. <br>

Personally I'd use Epson ink drained from large format Epson carts into refillable carts or a CIS if you are trying to cut cost but not quality. I would not use any third party ink which hadn't been tested here for accelerated aging: http://aardenburg-imaging.com/cgi-bin/mrk/_4102c2hvd19kb2NfbGlzdC80<br>

I did and ended up with "pigment" inks that faded badly after several months of display.<br>

You'll need a subscription to view the results, but it costs less than two R2880 carts and goes to a non-profit doing good work.</p>

[paul_duncan2]

<p>Thanks everybody for your comments. It seems very clear that 3rd party inks are not the way to go, so I'll stay with OEM inks. I haven't seem any prints from other manufacturers inks or systems for this printer, so had nothing to compare with but I'm very pleased with the results I'm getting with the OEM ink carts. Thanks again.</p>

[eric_brody]

<p>Next time, consider a printer with larger ink tanks, the 3800/3880 comes to mind. It's still not cheap, by a long shot, but the 80 ml cartridges for the 38xx are quite a bit more cost effective than the extraordinarily small ones for the 28xx series. I have no idea how long or how many prints it would take to make up the difference but... Someone recently said the 38xx is a $500 printer that ships with $500 worth of ink, a relative bargain.<br>

I agree with the other posters, other inks are just not worth it. The quality of prints I get from my 3800 is astounding and I have printed color and black and white in the traditional darkroom for almost 50 years.<br>

Good luck.<br>

Eric</p>