Please add:
Add the Brother HL-3040cn to the accurate list.
I just picked one up for AUD$179 in lieu of $299.
It great when you find an out of date "sale card" with that price and they have to honour the "advertised" price on the shelf.

Now where is that printout list I wrote down somewhere???

Oh, well my HP Deskjet 3050 All-in-One Printer is dead-on accurate; I measured 4 different floor tiles, 2 printed from our Windows 7 machine, and 2 with my Linux machine, all are perfectly accurate.

DO NOT get an epson sx515w it will not feed card of 200gsm even though it states it will print on up to 280gsm card

Add and hp colorlaser cp2025 (I have the cp2025dn model). so far everything has printed out great, make sure you turn off fit to page and duplexing. This printer prints cardstock from the manual paperfeed tray very well and the toner wears very well on the Tower of Chaos and the Roller Arena so far.

I guess I can confirm that the HP DeskJet 990c is also inaccurate. 6" on one side, 5 15/16" on the other. I'd ask if that realy makes that much of a difference, but I kno those errors will add up when I make larger projects.
Eh, the thing wasn't doing registration marks right, anyway.

Is it worth it to buy a whole new printer? Or could I use Kinkos or some such to print in the mean time?

In my experience I found it very much worth it to go for a new printer...especially if you plan to add a CISS system to it.
I tried for a while to go with commercial printing. It wasnt that expensive, and the look of the prints were superb...BUT costs do mount up, and any problems that crop up, or missed components, mean a trip back to the printers.
I spent about $100 on my printer, another $60 on the CISS, and so far $40 on inks (of which I have used less than half) As a conservative estimate over the last 16 months (time I have owned the printer and CISS) I used 250 sheets of cardstock a month so i have used about 4000 sheets ( i dont build everything I print, I dont keep everything i build either, but I do need to print a lot for testing cutfiles and such ) Ignoring the fact I still have not used half the ink I payed for, I have paid about 5c a page maximum (actually much less) I figure that I was paying about 20c a sheet buying inks, and about 75c a sheet at Office Depot.
So , plug your own usage into that, and see how the numbers work for you
Quality of the CISS inks has been extremely good...on par with the Canon inks I was buying before.

Is it possible with this old but still relevant thread to split out the ink jets from the laser jets? Looks like I am back in the hunt for a good laser printer.

My old Samsung CLP-610ND seems to be getting old. I have run three sets of cartridges through it, refilling them each time, but it is now printing pages in a real pretty pink shade, and streaking. The HP CP1215 prints nice, but I bought it for my wife and I hate using up all her toner as it is her baby.

For the record, both print exactly 6x6.

I tried checking out the local office supply store (Office Max) and most of the printers on the lists on page 1 aren't sold any more. Any suggestions for a new printer?

TelcoLou: I didn't find an HP Deskjet 3050, but I did find one that was a couple numbers off. Forgive my ignorance, but would that be essentially the same thing, like the same printer in a series?

I needed a printer that also did the family photo printing, my wife's business faxing and copying, and my papercrafting. I've been really happy with my Canon Pixma MX870. Just recently installed a continuous ink system in it too, and though it takes some getting used to, I haven't bought an ink cart in ages.

While the continuous ink feed sounds like it would give a long cartridge life like a 5500 page life of my laser printer, I still worry about the water soluble side effect of the ink jet method. Has anyone who has experience in both methods an opinion they would like to share?

Oh, don't forget to bring a ruler to measure! (or just take the pages home and measure)

Tested and measured my Canon Pro9000 Mk II for accuracy, and it is extremely accurate. Even on the 13" x 19" paper a printed ruler matched a real one exactly at every point and in both directions.

Much like the others my Canon MP560 passes for accuracy.

It may be time for a new printer. My old one was an HP 7200. Good color and results, awful ink cartridge management. It would constantly nanny me, asking for new cartridges even if I knew I wouldn't need that color or I knew there was enough left.

I recall that there are fans of Brother laser printers, but to replace I also need a scanner. Any suggestions? I wouldn't be opposed to CIS if its manageable and clean, though the clean/nice sheen of toner is a temptation.

If you want a Brother hl4040cn, which some folks on here (including Denny) are really fond of, I have a used one I'm trying to sell. It's just a color laser, though. No scanning or multifunction features.

Good idea. I'm going to be picking up a CISS for my HP 6500 soon, too.

My brother laser printer HL-3040CN just prints.

I got a separate canon inkjet printer for scanning and some limited copying.
I like the canon for scanning, found it the best for colour and size rendering.

Well, I finally had it with my HP OfficeJet 6500 being inconsistent with the colors it prints--and all with official HP cartridges. So, I spent a bunch of time at the local office supply stores doing TONS of sample prints on their display models and I've just picked up the from Staples.

They have it on sale for $100 off regular price this week AND if you look at their sale ad online, there's an additional 20% off 1 item coupon you could print that expired on 7/7. They let me combine both, so in the end it came out to $320 plus $22 tax. So far, I'm pretty happy with it. The tiles print out to proper scale on all sides and by messing with the print options I'm able to get some really good prints--even on just cheap cardstock. Glossy laser brochure paper looks even better, but it's a ton more expensive and you gotta deal with more glare.

This model doesn't have a port for a USB thumb drive, so I wasn't able to test it before buying it. I WAS able to do that testing on the , which uses the same toner cartridges, though. I didn't need all the extra scanner & fax features, so I didn't really want to buy a big, overpriced model. So, I gambled a little with the model I bought.

I'll try to start a separate thread with some scans of the sample prints I've done on it.

HP 8600 All-in-One = accurate (and it's low cost to run)

And a warning about the HP 8600: despite having a separate black cartridge, it won't print at all if one of the color cartridges runs out.

Can I get a followup on how well the HP Color LaserJet 451dn has been doing? Did you have to upgrade the memory at all? I'd been considering it as a printer upgrade from my inkjet until I saw a thread on Cardboard warriors about flaking of laserjet prints near folds and cuts, trying to decide if it's worth trying it or another laserjet, or sticking with an inkjet.

Thanks.

It's been working well. I haven't built a TON with it, but enough that I would have noticed any flaking near folds/cuts. I like the texture that it creates on just simple, cheap cardstock. It looks great, though I'm not 100% sure the color is always accurate. I'm working on some Pharaoh's Descent right now and the posts and tiles are coming out a pale yellow. Not exactly sure what shade it should be. Messing around with the CMB profiles, I can get more of a golden yellow if I print it using "Vivid CMB." Not yet sure which I prefer.

As expected, the included toner cartridges haven't lasted anywhere near as long as I would hope. The printer keeps yelling at me to replace them, but it keeps printing just fine with no apparent loss of color. I even swapped out the red and yellow the other day, but the printouts looked identical, so I put the originals back in for now.

Good to hear, thanks. It seemed to be the right compromise point for us on toner price, but only if it also would work for papercraft models.

I tried every color laser I could find in the stores around here and this one was the best on print quality.

Update on the HP Laserjet 451dn:

I'm still liking this printer. I finally swapped out the last of the toner cartridges that came with it. They actually will last a lot longer than the printer tells you. My total page count is around 775 at present. The only cartridge that shows less than full is the yellow. And it's reporting about 40% used. That was a little disheartening to me until I realized that everything I've printed from this thing has used yellow a lot. It's only been The Maiden, Thoumonts (almost all brown pieces), and now Pharaoh's Descent. So, I guess it stands to reason that I'm beating the heck out of the yellow far more than the rest.

Most of the time, I have to tell Adobe to "Allow printer to determine colors" and set the color settings in the printer properties to "Vivid Color" instead of the default "HP Easycolor." Without doing that, I'll get paler versions of the stuff with sets like Pharaoh's Descent. I don't know if that uses up the toner even faster than normal.

My Epson WF-630 is threatening to give up the ghost. It's telling me the ink pads need to be replaced -- I've used the reset utility but it appears to only give me another 50 or so pages before the printer clams up again...

It was a good printer, reliable and printing square. So despite being annoyed at Epson at the built-in obsolescence, I'd like to go Epson again.

Has anyone tried one of the "PrecisionCore" Epson all-in-one units to see if it prints square? I'm assuming all of the models (WF-2650, 2660, 3620...) have the same print engine.

Thanks for any shared experience.

Steve

It arrived yesterday and initial impressions:

It's HUGE
Prints are AMAZING!
Setup was a breeze
It's fast

Tested some accuracy with Hinterlands tiles. Using the Stream gridless tiles and the Paperlinx template I should get a 7x7 in square. After extensive testing it's indeed accurate! Just be sure all scaling is turned off and print 'actual size' or 100%. Any options like 'fit' or 'force to paper size' etc should all be turned off or switched to actual or image or document size.

I can't get over the print quality. Text as sharp as any high quality laser I've seen. Colors are so vivid and smooth. Images where there's translucency with other colors or shapes behind a foreground colors look soooooo smooth. Not a trace of banding... it's honestly everything I've ever imagined a printer could be. I only hope it prints this nice for years to come.

Specs: http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/ ... C11CC99201

I was comparing it to the Epson Artisan 1430 which is over $300. I wen line by line... spec by spec... and they were virtually identical. Only thing I found in my research is that the Artisan 1430 is better at photo printing on photo paper. It has six ink carts which reportedly gives it even better color quality. Also I heard some reviews that the WF 7110 is dye based so when you print on glossy photo paper it takes for ever to dry where as the apparently the 1430 doesn't do that. We don't care if it does photo printing. We do everything on cardstock and dries instantly on that.

The WF 7110 is on sale at Staples and Amazon for $150! That's $50 off it's regular price. I went ahead and ordered refillable ink carts and bottles of ink from inksupply.com. I used their refillable carts on my last printer and got six years out of them so I figured they deserved my business again. This printer does have some CIS options but that's a bit bold for me and my wife didn't like the idea of the lid being open all the time plus yet more space dedicated to this behemoth.

I love having two paper trays so I can always have cardstock and regular paper loaded. It will do banners up to 47" long which will be neat for some of our projects. Goes up to 13"x19" which is part of why it's so large.

Setup was super easy. We are using it totally wirelessly. It joined my network very easily and everyone was able to connect to it. Just had to reference the CD when Windows asked for a driver. We have to Win7 machines and two Win8.1 machines using it.

Have to face it though... it's a beast. I think this picture puts it into perspective. That's a 22" wide desk it's sitting on and it goes edge to edge! In the print tray there is an 8.5"x11" paper. It's little sidekick the Silhouette SD sits nicely right on top so that saved us some space.