Ink shelf life for EPSON R3000/R3800

It's time for me to upgrade my printer.

I am considering EPSON R3000 or R3800. One thing that concerns me is the ink cost and expected life of it. On specifications, EPSON says they will last 2 years unopened and 6 months installed. How long do these things really last in real-life situations? Are these ratings conservative, aggressive or just right? I fully understand it will depend on my actual situation. I live in Florida and the printer will be installed in an air-conditioned residential environment where temperature will range somewhere from 70ish to 83ish, and humidity will likely be 40 to 70%. Human comfortable environment. Usage will be light.

In analog world, shelf life of chemicals were rated very conservatively. My current cheap printer seems to have really long ink life but these are dye type inks, not pigment like those EPSONs.

Any input would be helpful.

PS. Obviously, I am not talking about how long the ink will last when I print.... I'm concerned about the life while it sits in the printer unused or lightly used.

With my 3800 I have several colors that came with the printer and are still working fine. That was several years ago.

Epson rep told me years ago, just run something once a week, maybe just a word doc. Sometimes i don that sometimes I don't. I print in spurts. I will go a long time and never print and then print 30 or 40 images at a time.

I have had to run a cleaning cycle once when banding became an issue, probably due to lack of use. The rep also told me , these machines need to be used, that is what they are built for and troubles come with the lack of use.

That'll be my usage. Every once in a while and in chunks.....

Ann, with that type of usage, how often do you have to replace ink tanks? I may print 8x10 and 11x14 every now and then. I may also print a bit of 4x6. Inks being so expensive for this model, that's more of a concern for me than the price of the printer.

Good to see you are here too, ann.... my supplier... superstore in Atlanta...

FWIW--The printer is not called "R3800". It's the Pro 3800 (which has been superceded by the Pro 3880)

I have a 3880, that also gets fairly irregular use. I've had to run a few (<10) cleaning cycles, but that's mostly because in the winter my indoor humidity can get in the 20-30% range, which is a little too dry. I should also get a dust cover for it, but I haven't yet.

Everything I've read says that the inks are stable for quite some time. I have some cartridges that have 2/2012 expiration that aren't even installed in the printer yet, and I'm not really sweating it. Epson just doesn't want to guarantee performance of old cartridges or opened ones that have been in uncontrolled environmental conditions. One tip I've read is that if your printer has sat idle for an extended period of time (weeks to months), it's a good idea to "agitate" your cartridges so the pigment particles don't settle. I remove each cartridge and invert it 10 cycles like I was tank-developing film. You don't want to be too rough, as you run the risk of making foam and introducing air into the lines. Best to let the cartridges sit for an hour or so after doing this before you print. You don't want to/need to do this with the R2000 or R3000, since the head movement keeps the cartridges agitated, and (I think) it will purge all the heads when it detects a cartridge swap. I know my old R1900 did this, and the 3800/3880 doesn't do this, as far as I can tell.

Red River Paper has published some pages looking at ink costs of various printers:

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-of-inkjet-printing.html

If you buy the 3800/3880, the printer comes with a utility that shows the actual ink usage of each print job. So knowing that each cartridge is 80ml, you can calculate your ink costs pretty closely. Depending on how light/how dark your prints are, the rule-of-thumb is about 1-1.5ml of total ink per square foot of image area. An 11x14 with 1/4" margins is almost exactly 1 square foot.

Lastly, you might want to look at B&H or Adorama for cartridges. You have to "add to cart" to see the actual pricing, but it runs about $47 a cartridge. Atlex.com/ITSupplies used to have better pricing, but their prices have gone up.

Hope all that helps...

--Greg

tkamiya said:

That'll be my usage. Every once in a while and in chunks.....

Ann, with that type of usage, how often do you have to replace ink tanks? I may print 8x10 and 11x14 every now and then. I may also print a bit of 4x6. Inks being so expensive for this model, that's more of a concern for me than the price of the printer.

Good to see you are here too, ann.... my supplier... superstore in Atlanta...

Click to expand...

I have only replaced 4 carts with one needing to be swap out shortly,.

I know ink is expensive, but many forget that high end inkjet papers aren't cheap either.

ann said:

I know ink is expensive, but many forget that high end inkjet papers aren't cheap either.

Click to expand...

Oh, no.... I haven't forgotten....

I guess I don't need to be super sensitive about the 6 month life then. That's good to know.

Thanks everybody!

Since most of my printing on a 3800 is B&W, some cartridges have been changed only once or twice in almost five years. This means they function long past the expiry date. I have rarely had to do a cleaning cycle. Do print something every week or two to prevent clogging that may cost you much more than the ink used in the print. You must have image files that deserve to be printed.