i'm sure the answer will change as technology changes, but what is currently the best printer to buy for the WW hobby? best quality, best price per page, etc...

The word, best, is very subjective. Some love lasers, and even as they drop in price, the starting price is just too high for my cash flow. I like my ink jet, and the ability to refill the cartridge brings the price way down for me. Others dont do refills, and some brands will void the warranty if you damage a printer with refilled or remanufactured/third party cartridges. So many things to think about. There are several printer discussions in the Model Building Tips and Questions section - you might want to go there and read through the whole thread to see what all opinions there are on this topic.

Tom

i saw those but i figured a centralized discussion might be more beneficial to any people new to the hobby that might wonder if their printer is good enough or if they're in the market for a new printer like me.

Well, then, you need to sort out how much you want to pay. Do you mind the cost of the ink cartridges, or would you rather spend a bit more but less often on toner cartridges for the laser? Are there other things you want to do with the printer? I use a Lexmark all-in-one, with a single color cartridge and no black ink - it mixes all colors to make black. It eats a bit more ink that way, but I also refill my own, so the cost per cartridge is below $5 that way. There are lots of folks here who swear by HP lasers, others who love Canon, and many who wont touch a Lexmark. The best is a word that is hard to define, as we all tend to think we have it. My opinion is, you should find a recent made HP color ink jet - they are relatively inexpensive, known to give good color images, and many companies make third party cartridges and refill kits cheaply. I havent done enough research to name a model at this point, but I can go that far. Others will probably give you more info.

Tom

Something to remember with ink and bubble refills, do not try it if the head and tank are integrated. Buy one with a separate tank from the print head.

I've used inkjet printers by cannon, hp, and brother. My hp had the best color match to what was on the screen. Indeed no 2 brands I've ever had print the same colors. However the HP cost the most for cartridges. If you go with an inkjet get one that has at least 3 seperate color cartridges, unless you do your own refilling.

I've never tried a laser printer though. I've simply never had the extra money to layout at the onset. Reguardless of the cost savings over the long run.

Right now I use a Brother 6 in 1 printer that I got for $60. Brother brand cartridges cost $13 color $22 black. Its the most cost effective inkjet I've seen. But the ink isn't waterproof and the prints are somewhat dull colored compared to the screen images. But they are still impressive when made.

I'll say it again, I love my Pixma iP3000. Of course, its getting harder to come by, but the Pixma series is still excellent. Just make sure its one with seperate ink carts. Generic ink on eBay is dirt cheap...we're talking $1 a cart.

My Canon Pixma iP4200 is doing me very well at the moment

I have one of these. I like it lots

Still figuring out how to get all the details on very dark items though. Maybe I need to put on very high quality print........ more testing required.

I had a similar problem with my iP3000 Shinobi. I had to lower the black levels, the magenta and the yellow and change it to light printing. It now looks nearly flawless. Took about 5 prints and tweaks to get it all set.

Cheers for the hint........ shall test it out over the weekend.

Does anyone have the following problem? On some WWG sets I cannot seem to print yellow correctly it turns out looking limey. On other model sets it prints perfectly well. I use an Epson Stylus Photo 890 ink jet printer. I've tried about every setting I can. I am just about ready to take the Maiden to a print shop if I can't correct the problem soon.

I had been so pleased with my printer until this started. I had hooked up a new continuos feed system for the ink. At first I thought I got a bad batch of ink, but then it prints other sets just fine.

I don't know how to change the color setting on my printer at all. While mine doesn't have a problem like your talking about DeltaIce, mine does give the grey stone in CWU a tan color and that redish wood comes out plain brown. So they're different from what WW designed, but they still look like stone and wood so I haven't needed to really find a way to fix it.

I am beginning to wonder if the ones I have a problem with are'nt using the RGB color set ... might be a different one. I guess I'll test that out. Its the last thing I can think of.

I see from some review sites that the iP4200 has a very restrictive policy regarding refilling ink cartridges. Are you guys just buying new carts or are you going the refill route?

I've had EXTREMELY good results with my HP OfficeJet Pro K550 (Full review here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1923244,00.asp ) . Very close to laser in terms of print clarity and I love the loading tray HP seems to be making a genuine effort here to get ink costs down and I give them high marks for the effort.


I recently coupled that with a continuous ink refill system (something I've wanted for a very long time) http://www.macroenter.com/CISS_for_the_ ... 0-k550.htm . I've never hid the fact that I have a huge hate on for inkjet makers and their grossly inflated ink costs. Using this system I will be saving literally hundreds of dollars on ink. So far I've had incredible results and I highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about the hobby.

Denny-

YOU SUX!

I JUST GOT MY COLOUR LASER PRINTER AND NOW YOU GOT ME DROOLING OVER THIS?!

YOU JUST SUX!




That looks like a really great setup. $200 for the printer and $100 for the CFS from what I can tell. Any idea on the cost per page?

I purchased a HP K550 after reading Denny's posts (The posibility of a CIS option was a real seller).

I am getting some bad banding in the blacks (colors look fine). It was a floor model from Staples so I may return and purchase a new unit. However after reading reviews it seems like the banding is a common problem. It appears there are issues all the time with the BLK/YLW Printhead (a $65 unit). Of course people always complain much loder then they complement.

Has anyone else noticed this problem and if so could you point me in the direction of any fixes?

Like I said maybe a new unit is the way to go.

I got one ok print out of the machine but if I can clear up these problems I think I could be VERY HAPPY with the k550. Man does it print FAST!

I haven't had any problems with banding on my K550. If you purchased your unit at Staples I would recommend taking it back for a replacement. They have an excellent hassle free return policy on things like this. If they can't get you a new k550 they may even be able to offer you a cost effective upgrade in the Officejet line?

In terms of CIS compatible printers be sure to check out the available kits at http://www.macroenter.com/Continuous_In ... _s/504.htm . They carry complete lines for Canon, Epson and HP.

I purchased a HP K5400 lastweek, which uses the same cartridges and printheads as the 550 and dont see problems on my printouts or testpattern 2. I see a very faint line on the linefeed test pattern.
As macroenter does not have a listing for the K5400, I am hoping the one for the k550 will work. I will have to ask them next month, as I had to replace thecis alternater in my truck friday, money which I was planning on buying a cis.

Color laser is definitely the way to go, if you have the budget for one. My wife got hers for $300 after rebate, a Konica Minolta magicolor 2400W, but she's had it for a year or two so I'm sure you can do even better by now.

It's been a great printer, but it is a bit quirky. And if you go the laser route, make sure you refill the toner cartridges at least once yourself before replacing - don't replace the cartridges with a new one each time they run out. That'll cost you a fortune. It's not that bad to refill a toner cartridge, but don't expect any help from the laser jet industry. They make their money on selling you half-full toner cartridges.

All you have to do, though, is buy some cartridge chips online for 10 bucks a piece and replace those on the cartridge. That resets the page count on the cartridge, making the printer think it's a new one. Then just drill a hole in the cartridge and fill with toner that's designed to go in your printer. You can do this a couple of times before you need to break down and get a new cartridge.

I've used both inkjet and color laser, and I have to say, once you see how great the results are with the color laser, you won't want to ever mess with inkjet again. In fact, I recently boxed up and gave away my nice inkjet printer because it had been on my desk collecting dust every since we got the color laser.

Inkjets work great on coated paper, and maybe if they made coated cardstock it would be a good option for WWG models. But the problem is, cardstock is very fiberous, so the ink tends to bleed and spread out when it soaks into the paper. Also, inkjet models tend to fade over time and end up with this "fuzzy" look. I think the colors must bleed or something, because I've compared year-old inkjet and laserjet models side-by-side and there's no comparison how well the laserjet maintains its sharpness and color vibrance.

If you're on a tight budget, you can't beat an inkjet for price. Especially if you tap and fill the cartridges yourself, as I did. But if you can hold off and save up for a color laser, I think you'll be blown away by the quality.

Avoid the Samsung CLP-300 Laser Printer. It refuses to load, and when it does load it curls the hell out of the print out.

At Denny's suggestion (in another thread elsewhere), he recommened a Brother 4040CN. I recently got one, and I'm completely sold on it!

I have had nothing but trouble with colour laser printers when it comes to printing paper terrain and those were all high quality HP machines.
On the flipside, I have nothing but fun with PhotoSmart HP inkjet printers when using the Vivera ink line.
Then again, I do not use card stock; I use 9mil matte photo paper.
It is just as thick as 110# card stock, prints with greater clarity & hue, bleeds not at all and fades even less with Vivera inks.

I strongly recommend any HP PhotoSmart 7000 series printer that uses the 02 ink cartrige line or HP PhotoSmart 8000 or HP PhotoSmart 9000 series printer that uses the 38 ink cartrige line.
The 02 & 38 series cartriges are separate reservoirs for each colour so you do not have the waste that tri-colour cartriges result in.

Good Evening All!

So I'm sort of new to the cardstock thing (although I've tried some from another company). I'm impressed with what I can see of the WWG sets and plan on buying some, but before I do, I'm also looking for some up to date advice on what printer and CISS would work best. I got a couple of color laser printers that I've tried (Samsung CLP-510 and Okidata C3400N) and haven't been super pleased with the results with my other cardstock terrains. The Samsung is poorly designed to do any type of heavyweight paper, the Oki has a straight through paper feed, but it seems that the toner on the paper "chips" when I'm assembling.

So I'm looking for a decent inkjet that I can run 110# cardstock through and hook up a CISS. What's the new great printer for this type of stuff?

Thanks!

Just had 12 ricoh network lasers installed at work...... big £3500 pro machines.
managed to get one in my class room:)

Even does A3.

'Yes, I'm printing those for an art lesson this afternoon'

Wormhole @ 200% anyone?

I need to stop these thoughts, now I want to try it...

Gotta try it

I'm thinking about wallpapering a bedroom with it

Hps do have incredible photo quality compared to our KM wares, but getting them to start of a morning is a long job, they take half an hour to get booted, and warm up/calibrate the engine...
The CLJ-1510/1515 engines we have tried (2 so far) both have been minor disasters; the first got an inexplicable spot somwhere on one roller or another inside somewhere, and we never found out where so we sent it back with a repeating spot down the image. The next had an inherent problem, you wouldn't notice really until you printed a PDF, the system seems to be incompatible with PDF so a line of colour can be printed across the bottom of the page.
Shouldn't bother us for modelling as properly formatted sheets of model parts shouldn't go that close to the edge, due to many colour systems not being able to print that close, but...