Discussion: Home printer advice?

My reliable old printer is finally giving up the ghost.

What are the latest suggestions for a good home printer? I print lots of maps for fieldwork, course setting, etc. They do not necessarily need to be competition quality. Looking for reliability, reasonable costs to supply / operate, fast for multi-page jobs, good color quality.

I recommend the Oxford Copy Shop...

I've always used Canons. Very happy with the quality and speed. For maps use better paper for sharper images. Also use separate ink cartridges so can replace one at a time.

Does Epson make a durabrite printer that has ink cartridges combined with printheads? I really like the water-durability of durabrite, but I can't really recommend one unless the printhead gets replaced with the ink cartridge, or they've made provisions that make it easy to mechanically clean the printhead (i.e., with solvents and lint-free wipes, not by wasting ink with software "declogging routines").

I've got two, a C84 and C88, and they're both hopelessly clogged. A friend of mine fixed his C80, but he moved before I could ask him to show me how he did it.

Are there any good, inexpensive color lasers?

I got a color laser Brother HL-4070CDW about four years ago. Prints okay at 1:10,000 but 1:15,000 is not that good. Changed cartridges once.

Whatever you get, test print and if the colors are wrong confirm that you can adjust that. I didn't, and my colors are wrong (100% magenta is reddish), with no known way to tweak it on the printer side. At least it's okay for scouting, training, setting, etc.

Not good for ISSOM quality maps though, which is what you should be focused on.

I have tended to find that ink cartridges cost almost as much as a replacement printer with an ink cartridge already installed. It seems dumb.

I managed to pick up 3 surplus HP 4700 color lasers with a bunch of replacement toner cartridges, they only print in A4, but with several rounds of color tuning and good paper quality I got results which "Mr IOF Mapping Commission" (i.e. Håvard Tveite) accepted so I am currently a certified map printer here in Norway.

1:10K is very good and even 1:15K is quite good, the colors don't bleed when wet and the the per-page cost is a _lot_ lower than any of my older inkjet printers.

BTW, the hardest to get correct is brown: With CMYK printing contours needs a blend of all the input colors, and they all have to fit within the 0.14 mm line width.

tRicky. The installed ink cartridge in the new printer is generally lower capacity than replacements.But even so, the price of new printer is generally a come on to get you addicted to consumables. I also score generic cartridge availability very high in my purchase decision.

I don't own a printer.

I agree that Epson has squandered the industry's best ink on print heads that are unmaintainable. I've had to throw away two otherwise great printers because of clogs. I think this is a symptom of not printing enough. If the ink sits in the head for more than a day or so, it congeals. Unless you want to buy one of their industrial large-format printers and run it several times a day (an expensive proposition unless you are running a printing business), look elsewhere.

On Epsom +1

I've got an Epson All-in-One inkjet that's so old that my stationer has to order in the cartridges. It works fine for draft prints, the colours are fairly similar to the downtown commercial service we use, no problem with ink congealing, ink is water resistant. Of course I'm paying a fortune for ink but that's the industry norm.

My Epson C84 is clogged. I did find some advice online about unclogging the jets, but have not tried.
Picked up an HP6700. Adequate but not great.

The newer EPSON WorkForce series machines seem less prone to clogging, at the expense of an automatic wasteful software inkwash cycle every ten prints or so. I don't seem to ever get more than one or two nozzles clogged on mine at a time, and it self-corrects, I don't think I ever did a manual nozzle clean; and the printer does sit idle for a few weeks at a time in a dog-hair environment.

The cheaper WorkForces don't have a resolution as good as the Stylus Photo series, but only marginally so. It's enough of a difference that some of our March 2014 event maps were arguably below par. All Sprint maps I've printed so far have been fine, they don't have many contours and rock features in the green.