Epson 7700/9700 Released

[bms]

Oh, I see, top secret - hush, hush, walking-sticks with poisoned tips - stuff... :biggrin:

I guess I'm out of touch with Epson printers. I didn't know there was a 4-cartridge plus "cleaning cartridge" (ahem!) 24" printer in their range. I thought you might have been talking about the 7xxx series (oh, but where's my thinking? That's a 24" one that Epson defines as "large format". Clearly there must be a 24" one that they define as "small format"... :biggrin:).

Officially launched today:

Epson 7700/ 9700 with 250ml SubliJet-E cartridges running in Matte Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Photo Black (cleaning cart) and using PowerDriver for colour management in the Windows environment. 250ml SubliJet-E cartridges have a RRP of £80 +vat.

[Justin]

That's some price for a sublimation printer! I think I'd be looking at large format machines and 'official' third party inks if I was going to spend that sort of money Useful to be able to print on rolls but I wonder how many folk will actually spend this much?

[Paul]

No large format is 42" or wider. This is small format still.

0:27sec.

[JSR]

Officially launched today:

Epson 7700/ 9700 with 250ml SubliJet-E cartridges running in Matte Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Photo Black (cleaning cart) and using PowerDriver for colour management in the Windows environment. 250ml SubliJet-E cartridges have a RRP of £80 +vat.

Well outside my price range - the ink saving is so negligible even at this size (£80+VAT vs £85+VAT for Artanium for a smaller printer), that there's no incentive from Sawgrass to "go big". The only incentive is if you need to print that big. Nevertheless, I'm curious about the printers.

Reading up on the Epson website, they seem to have ditched the K3 technology to make a four-ink pigment printer but still without the gloss optimiser of the other Ultrachrome inkset. I'll be reading reviews on this as they come out.

Out of curiosity, does the SubliJet-E "cleaning cart" cost the same £80+VAT of the other colours? Near as I can tell, the "cleaning cart" will never be used because the printer is designed with an auto-shared black ink channel. I.e., it's a 4-ink printer that uses either the Matte Black or the Photo Black depending on whether you're printing matte or glossy paper. Whichever black you use, they share the same channel. If you're only ever print matte (as with sublimation), the other black will never be used. Seems pretty tight if the intention is for Sawgrass to charge £80+VAT for the sake of something that'll never be used. That "cleaning cart" should cost pennies compared to the actual colours. Is that the way it's priced?

[pisquee]

So, as the 9700 is an officially recognised large format printer in the eyes of Sawgrass (ie over the 42" rule) then a set of refillable cartridges and one of the other brands of bulk ink for commercial printing will be useable, and therefore a LOT cheaper then using the Sawgrass Sublijet carts. Although you will have to buy the inks in litres, but then a litre bottle of non-Sawgrass bulk ink (even proper licensed stuff) can be had for around the same price as one of their cartridges. Obviously, the same goes for any of the 9xxx 44" Epson, so you don't even have to get this expensive newer model with Sawgrass "tax" you could get an old 9600 second hand on Ebay for a relative pittance. Even with the added expense of having to get the set of refill carts and an ICC made, it still will save you a fortune.
Anyone using a 44" printer and not buying commercial bulk ink here?
In fact even buying litres of Sawgrass Artainium bulk ink from BMS would work out more cost effective than their own Sublijet carts.
The cleaning cartridge would be there as the printer needs a cartridge present to function, so cleaning fluid seems a logical choice for an ink channel/bay that won't be used, and is what I've told people to use when wanting to set up a large epson with a photo black cartridge. I assume that like with other large Epsons that it does auto-head cleaning, and runs all the channels at the same time, so some of whatever is in the photo black line will be used for this, But, they are charging a fortune for cleaning fluid in a cartridge - surely, even just replacing this cart with a generic refill cart and cleaner fluid (or water!) would be save you good money.

[Andrew]

I've seen some people in the past run printers with dual inks when they have 8 colour option i.e. subli in 4 and regular inks in the other 4 so they can switch between theses options. Anyone know which current printers can run like this?

I actually thought the 9700 wasn't a bad price for a big printer like that. Is it not as technical as the likes of the 9800/80 etc?