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Epson T3270 or T3470 Experience?
It looks like my HP-450C has finally given up the ghost. Even with a fresh black cartridge, it’s producing blotchy plots.
I don’t produce many full-size prints anymore — most of my deliverables are digital now — but I still need full-size maps on mylar for recording. I’ve been toying with the idea of ditching the in-house plotter entirely and relying on a service bureau for the half-dozen or so mylars I need every year. That would mean foregoing the ability to plot full-size check prints, but I guess I can live with that.
The local FedEx/Kinko’s can’t do mylar, nor can the independent copy shop in town, so I sent the project at hand to a service bureau in Sacramento (about 15 miles a way, it’s the nearest one, as far as I know). I got the mylar delivered on the same day, and it looks great. The only problem is that the cost of printing and delivery came to $140.88 for a single 18″x26″ mylar. At that price a couple dozen mylars will pay for a new plotter.
So I’m looking at new plotters again. HP doesn’t seem to have done anything innovative recently in the small-shop market; the T520 looks like a warmed-over 450C, and I’ve read a lot of complaints about HP’s drivers. I’m looking at the Epson T-series, which look like they might actually be using newer technology. The trouble is, I haven’t found any actual user reviews except one by Ralph Grabowski, who got a pre-production T3170 to test. He liked it, but doesn’t have any reliability data.
Since I’ve standardized on 34″x22″ or smaller, I can get away with a 24″ printer like the T3270 or T3470. (Epson support staff told me that the T3170 isn’t recommended for use with mylar, but that both the T3270 and T3470 are.) From what I’ve gathered the difference between the two is the print head (10-channel versus 4-channel, which translates to the color gamut capability). The latter is also reportedly optimized for workgroup use, whatever that means.
My question, then: Does anyone here have experience with Epson large-format inkjets that they’d care to share?
Thanks!
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13 Replies
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I can’t comment on the T3270 or T3470 but I do have the T3170. I haven’t used it enough to say how it’s going to hold up but overall I am happy with it, especially for the price.
I haven’t tried to print on mylar yet but I can say that there is a definite improvement in the print quality when you change the settings from standard to CAD/Line Drawing.
If you would like a test plot to see the quality, shoot me an email with a pdf and I’ll print it and mail it to you. c o r e y f @ p l s – a r . c o m remove the spaces.
Corey
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I also can’t comment on those two, but you shouldn’t overlook the HP T120. I’ve had one for years and it does a great job. I also had a 450C
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Old HP 600 stills works but can’t get good ink anymore. Won’t do good shading either.
I found a local print shop that will print a 24×36 Mylar for $2.50 if I supply the Mylar. I’ve thought about telling them to at least double the fee as I don’t want them to go out of business. I had a roll of Mylar but probably won’t last to much longer then they are going to supply the mylar. Problem is they are about 50 miles away. Can get it next day UPS for about $12 but I need to supply the boxes which are about $1. They should charge to box it up.
The only Mylar’s I plot anymore are ones that are required for filing or recording. As soon as I can get around that plotting will be totally dead. You can file records of survey in some counties digitally (none I work in). I’m not sure how we get a subdivision plat done digitally as for the number of signatures needed. Possible but may be difficult to do (get it all signed).
It’s hard for a solo operator to justify a good plotter for sure. It inconvenient to not have a plotter.
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I also can’t comment on those two, but you shouldn’t overlook the HP T120
The T120 gets very mixed reviews right here in this forum. A couple say it’s great, a couple say it’s awful, and at least one says “it’s okay, but I’d get something better.”
In your experience, how does the T120 do with mylar film? That’s my most important criterion.
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The mileage charges and extras can make having your product delivered by the printer is too costly unless the client wants to bear that expense.
When that happens, I sent to the reproduction shop and let the client make whatever arrangements and pay for them.
Epsom are some fine printers and always had to be on and were intended for several reams of paper each week.
They are not the turn on let it warm up and make your prints and turn it off equipment, they have some fine ink ports that produce the great print features you want and need to maintain an automated cleaning process for them to be able to do that. Turn them off and the ink will be drying up on the heads.
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Turn them off and the ink will be drying up on the heads.
The T-series plotters automatically power off after 8 hours of no activity. The manual specifically cautions against increasing the power-off delay due to the effect on energy efficiency. How often you have to run ink through the heads is an open question, but inks have changed a lot in recent years; they *may* have addressed the power-off clogging issue.
P.S. Epsom makes some fine salts; Epson makes the fine printers.
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I remember the T110 was a dog and returned dismal reviews, but I have absolutley zero issues with my T120 and I’ve probably ran over 400 rolls of paper through it in 5 years. I have to plead ignorance as to mylar performance, never need to do that. Given the infrequency you probably need to print mylar could you have that done via the web and mailed to you and pass the expense on to the customer?
I noticed earlier today while visitng a friendly competitor in the area that he has an Epson plotter, he said it has done well for him. I don’t recall the precise model, though. It looked five or six years old.
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One thing about the T120 (this is admittedly stupid) when you put a new ink cartridge in it runs over to the cleaning tray and makes the most pleasing “pyew, pyew” noise, sounds like a little elderly fellow trying to spit. ???
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Given the infrequency you probably need to print mylar could you have that done via the web and mailed to you and pass the expense on to the customer?
The clients pay in any case, but at $141 per sheet I decided that the cost and delay of using a service bureau doesn’t justify foregoing the speed and convenience of having an in-house printer. And given my dissatisfaction with HP of late, I decided to give the Epson T3470 a try. I just pulled the trigger on the purchase, and will post an update after I have a chance to try it out.
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Anything larger than ledger gets sent to a print shop that most of the local contractors use to get digital plans printed.
Ask for photo quality printing and the image is super sharp and easy to read the super fine print.
It costs about $2 per copy for a 36×48 plus the mileage to pickup and deliver.
Most of the time I put two 24×36 on one sheet and make the cut myself.
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I’ve had the T3470 for about 2 weeks now. I’ve only run a dozen or so plots through it, some paper and some mylar. Initial remarks:
1. The units come with small cartridges (110 ml), about half of which is used during initial setup to charge the system. I bought a replacement set (110 ml for the 3 colors, 350 ml for the black cartridge) and spent $430, or about $0.63 per ml. I think I used to pay about $35 per 42 ml cartridge for my HP-450C ($0.83 per ml), so the Epson ink is a bit less expensive but in the same ballpark.
2. I’m currently connecting the printer over WiFi, as a remodeling project in progress is keeping me from hosting it in my office. That’s been really convenient, and I may just keep connecting that way once I move it into my office if it keeps working so well.
3. I had some initial setup problems with the Windows 10 driver. The printer response was super slow, as in 30 seconds to respond to each print setup selection. Epson phone support was worthless; I blame this on a constitutionally unfit support rep and the fact that the product is new, having been released only last November. After hanging up in frustration, I reinstalled the driver as a Hail Mary attempt, and it’s been working fine ever since.
4. Sheet feeding is fussy. Not much more so — if at all — than the 450C, but it takes some getting used to (it’s top-feed versus bottom-feed on the 450C). I have some cut sheet stock in both paper and mylar that I’d like to use up, but after that I’ll probably stick with roll stock. (I didn’t have a roll feed attachment for my 450C due to space constraints — I actually have it mounted on the wall about head high — but when my office gets reconfigured I’ll be able to accommodate the Epson on the floor.)
5. I’m having trouble with some CAD masking entities, specifically monument symbols with an open center. (The center isn’t actually open, it has a solid fill in color 255, which normally prints white.) For reasons I haven’t yet been able to figure out, the draworder isn’t being respected when printing some — but not all — drawings. My workaround is to print to PDF first, then sent the PDF to the Epson, but I’d like to get this straightened out eventually.
6. Two weeks in and I’m happy with the purchase. I felt that HP was just phoning it in with respect to the small-office large-format printer market, while Epson seems to be taking it seriously. Time will tell if that works out the way I hope it will.
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I have been looking at this very hard.
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I have an IPF 780 for the last couple of years. It also came with an after market scanner/copier hooked up to it. It makes great plots on all kinds of different media.
The scanner/copier computer attached can be a little tempermental and requires it to be rebooted routinely to work.
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