In this country Epson has a generous cash-back offer on the R3000 & inks until the end of Sept. We pay a lot more for printers and inks here than you do in the US, so I’m thinking seriously about getting one.
While I’ve had generally good experiences with refillables (yours and other suppliers) in my peizo printers (1410 & R1900), I’ve had a struggle with refillables (not yours) in my colour printers (2100 & R2400). I’m not a high volume colour printer and tend to print in bursts, and I also travel a bit, which results in periods without printing. It’s not clear to me whether I’ll bother with non-OEM inks if I do get an R3000, but given the nature of my printing I will need at least some refillables to use with cleaning solution that I insert between printing sessions. Plus I’d want to leave open the option of non-OEM inks, and given the cost of non-US freight I’d need to get several sets of carts. So I have a couple of questions about the refillables for the R3000.
I’ve seen some reports that carts without batteries are becoming available for the R3000. My local supplier has some, and there are reports in dpreview that you’re assessing them at the moment. I’d probably prefer yours, given the effort you’ve put into QA.
Qu1. Is this correct?
Qu2. If so, when?
Qu3. How would they operate? Will there be any way to reset all of them at once, or will it be an ARC-style of operation?
The point of #3 is that I really dislike auto reset carts. In a 7 or 8 or 9-colour printer there’s always one cart that is about to reset, which disrupts printing. On the printers that I’ve owned you can burn through a lot of ink with these frequent resets of one cart at a time, and if these newer battery-less carts can’t be reset in sync they I may prefer the ones with the batteries. Chip resetters that work on the older ARC chips have been a god-send.
Qu4. Is it true that in the R3000, changing a cart (i.e. resetting the chip) doesn’t result in a head clean cycle, like on my existing printers?
If that’s the case then an ARC-style cart might be ok. I could do what I used to do and fill them all up when LM is out, since that colour is always used up fastest.
Qu5. How much ink is used in an R3000 in changing between ink and cleaning carts? These printers have print lines that need to be cleaned out don’t they, like the larger printers, albeit shorter ones? So I assume I’ve got to do enough head cleans to get the peizoflush through, and then do the same when the inks go back in. This must use more ink than the older printers (2100, 2400, 2880).
TIA