[Scribus] large format printers

[neil lewis]

Hi Gustavo,

I have a Epson Stylus 3000, which is A2. It works perfectly on Linux,but 
is quite an old model now, so the speed is not great. Also, it's only 
four colour, so the colours can be a bit less subtle than the newer 
seven colour printers. I've been looking for an upgrade myself, so I may 
be of some help to you.

I have tested the Stylus Pro 7000 series (25" carriage, A1) seem to work 
perfectly, and 9000 series (44" carriage). On these, everything is fully 
supported, including paper cutting when I tested them. I was using SuSE 
9.1 at  the time, so it's likely that there would be no problems at all 
with any distro by now.

The speed of these depends upon the printing filter settings and the PC 
or RIP used to run it. I've had a 7000 make a proof quality A1 in about 
ten minutes  (720x720 dpi, 7-colour, bidirectional) but it could take 
much longer if you used, for example 2880x1440, Unidirectional, 
Interlaced. The 9000 was printing about 1 SqM/Hr at highest quality 
settings, but would be much faster at proofing quality and with a faster 
PC or RIP.

These printers have USB2 and Firewire interfaces (probably parallel too, 
but I can't remember offhand) and I was using a quite low-powered PC to 
test them - Duron 1200MHz/256MB RAM.

The Epson (125ml - 150Ml) inks for these can be had for about ?40 each.  
I'm not aware of 3rd party carts for these at the moment (though for my 
3000, I can get them for about ?5 each). Continuous ink kits are 
available from Lyson and others so you can just attach 1L bottles, which 
is much cheaper. I think the kits are about ?150 - ?200. Add your inks 
to that of course. Lysons are around ?80 - ?120 per Litre depending on 
whether or not they are the "archival" versions. They also make ink sets 
with various different gamuts and also 7-ink greyscale sets, (which are 
also supported on the CUPS drivers) if they are of interest to you.

The current 7000 series printers cost about ?1,500, the 9000 series 
about ?2,500 I believe.

Hope that helps.

Neil Lewis, Gibsons Photography, London.

Gustavo Homem wrote:

>Hello,
>
>What models would you recommend for large format printing?
>
>Specifically, we are looking for an A2 printer and an A1 one. 
>
>It is a _strict_ requirement to be perfectly supported under linux (it's 
>probably better if they understand Postscript).
>
>If someone has experience with this, regarding pricing (hw, toners....), 
>performance, reliability, etc, I'd be glad to hear about it.
>
>These printers will be used for magazine previews.
>
>Best regards
>Gustavo
>
>
>  
>