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Posted
I'm looking into this myself at the moment and have had little success unless you want to pay for it. The advise from an Epson/Brother rep is as follows.
The problem is not so much the weight of the paper but its density. Photo paper at 250gsm will be accepted by many printers but card at the same weight will not. If you force paper through as I know many do you will end up ruining the printer.
Unfortunately even the Epson rep didn't know any info about what weight or thickness of paper Epson printers will receive. In order to get best reproduction the jets need to be as close to the paper for clarity of outline and the latest generations of Epson printers have exploited this need.
He advised that the best budget printer on the market for this purpose would be the Canon PIXMA iP7250 circa £75 - not even one of his. However a bit of research shows that the cost of ink cartridges is exorbitant and there appear to be no cheap alternatives available
I will be most interested in other peoples experiences.
Posted
I use the Epson Stylus PHOTO R2880. It prints up to A3, use archival inks, and prints from the front, back, and top, and wil take something like, up to 3mm thick card. If you are having problems with colour, you need to check the settings on your monitor, and sync them with your printer.A site that can help callibrate your monitor, is ephotozine, at the bottom of the gallery pages is a strip of 16 shades of grey (not a mini of the novel:-)) If you can see all of them, your monitor is reasonably callibrated, if not, adjust your settings until you can.Look for info on the web about callibrating your monitor and printer.bestMick
Posted
So far my research is coming up with the Canon PIXMA iP4500 at about £75.00 it takes card up to 273g and has cheaper ink than comparable rivals (apparently- looking into that). Has anyone out there got one? I will take a look at the iP7250.
I'm not looking for archival quality printing, this is purely for greetings cards, I have my prints done for me. The colour problems I have been having with my current printer are more to do with one or more of the colours drying up during printing. which no amount of nozzel cleaning or sitting the ink cartridge on wet tissue seems to resolve. :-(
I don't really want to spend more than £150 on this if possible.
Posted
Hi Jilly I HAD the Cannon PIXMA iP4500 I also printed all my cards with it. It was excellent... I very kindly and very stupidly gave it to my son.... And rue the day. I now have the Kodak ESP C310...I regret giving away my Cannon. The Kodak is O K but I do find that it uses more ink . So my recommendation is the Cannon. I also found I could buy genuine inks more competitively.
Posted
Thanks for the suggestion I will look at the spec. Do you print cards with the Kodak, as that's my main objective?
And thanks Sylvia, I'm thinking this could be what I'm looking for, my camera is also a Canon so the compatability might be an advantage too. Do you know the weight/thicknes of the card you used? :-D
Posted
Similar to Blooddaxe I use and Epson R3000 A3+ printer with lightfast inks. The only thing with these printers is simply the cost so you need to decide if it would be worth your while. The R3000 costs around £600 and comes with a set of inks, however when the inks are first installed you use a lot of ink whilst it fills the ink tubes. A full set of ink (7 colours) costs around £160 however they are very large cartridges.
The good thing though is that these printers are made to take thick paper and even thicker board using a front feeder. This front feeder allows the card to pass through without being subjected to too much bending so avoids rolling around a roller to a certain degree.
I have found to print a sheet of A4 card with say 3/4 ink coverage as worked out (after many prints) to be around 40p per printed sheet, plus the cost of the card or art paper. However it will most likely take a long time for the printer to pay for itself. *-)
I did get fed up with my old epson not wanting the take the card through the printer, or when it did it simply spit out out the other end in one fell swoop!
I'm glad I bought it though as the print quality is outstanding especially with the seven colours it uses, plus there's two blacks, one for photos and another for printing cards and painting reproductions. In a sense this is Giclee printing at home! :-D
You still have to make sure that you have your monitor colours set correctly, most people tend to have their monitors far to bright which is something I didn't realise until I started the research and testing!