Just wondering if anyone here has any advice or experience with wide format printers. I probably won't be getting anything larger than A1/24 inches, but any info you can provide would be helpful.
i have epson 9600 7 colour proofers (the 42" model) they are superb image quality with vibrant long lasting inks but unless you use rip software that gang up or auto rotate images they can be a bit wastefull material wise. im considering adding an epson 4000 to the collection as well for small proofs to try and save ink and paper.
The 7600 is probably closer to what I'm looking at. How cost effective do you consider yours to be (IE how many prints do you have to be doing before it becomes more economical than going to the printers)? What RIP software do you use? It looks quite expensive from what I can see. Thanks for the info!
Sam - running costs vary depending on the paper you use. a full set of inks for the 9600 costs around 350 pounds and paper between 175 and 300 pounds a roll for the 42" size. these are for Epson branded papers but it gets a lot cheaper if you buy other brands from paper merchants. most paper companies have downloadable profiles for the printers for their stock. Ilford for example do wide format stock of their renowned photo paper and I looked carefully at their stuff at the DRUPA show in Dusseldorf earlier this year and to my mind it was the best on show for quality of reproduction. we bought the proofer with the standard epson stylus rip pro software which works ok however we will be upgrading to the DuPont Chromalin based ChromaPro XP RIP shortly as we offer large format printing to commercial customers who require this standard as well. Unless you absolutely need a wide format I would go for the Epson 4000 instead which uses the same ink system and is A2+ size.