Piezography Ink Install Instructions for the Epson® Stylus Photo R3000 Printer

How to install and use Piezography ink on the R3000.

Summary

Use these procedures to convert your color printer to a Piezography printer. The placement of the shades of Piezography ink are critical and not arbitrary. You must refer to the shade placement chart provided here on this document. Most Piezography systems depend upon the QuadtoneRIP software with which to control the ink shades. Installation instructions and support of that software is provided by the manufacturers of those software. We provide our own guides to our suggested use of QuadToneRIP, so that you can get the best results from that product. Additionally, Piezography on the Mac requires the use of Print-Tool. This software has quickly become a defacto utility for anyone wanting to properly color manage their printing workflow. A full manual for Piezography can be downloaded with the free Piezography Community Edition.

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT R3000: It is CRITICAL that you read all of these instructions as the R3000 is the first printer from Epson that has a new ink installation procedures. If you think that you can install without first reading because you are very experienced with Piezography and Epson printers – the R3000 is a totally new in ink installation procedure.

Printer Testing

We usually recommend that your printer functions perfectly with Epson inks before installing Piezography inks. We do this so that it makes it easier for you to ascertain that you have a printer problem before installing and wasting expensive Piezography inks. In addition to printing a perfect nozzle check, make certain that the printer does not have unfixable banding problems by making test prints. Take the time to scrutinize your printer’s performance before the next step. It is not possible to diagnose many printing problems on a printer that has not first been tested with Epson inks.

However, with MacOS users – the testing of the printer with Epson color inks will make for a more difficult installation process. Not impossible, just more difficult. And because this printer is the first Pro style printer to be released without a Power Clean function, changing over inks is a different procedure from any previous installation instructions. So even if you are a seasoned Piezographer and this is your umpteenth printer – please pay close attention to how Piezography inks can be installed in the R3000. There are two ways.

Virgin Ink Installation

The easiest method to install Piezography inks on the R3000 is by installing them into the printer as it’s first set of inks. The reason for this is that when the R3000 is first turned on and ink cartridges are installed for the first time, the printer performs an ink initialization which pulls in about 15ml of ink from each cartridge into the ink dampers, the ink lines, and the print head. This is not much different than that of the Epson Pro 3880 – and this printer shares many of the same components.

However, the Epson Pro Printers have Power Clean functions which allow you to perform an operation that pulls fresh ink from the cartridge all the way to the print head by forcing out the 20ml or more ink located inside the dampers and print lines. The R3000 does not have this feature. There is a Windows operating procedure using the Epson Service Adjustment Software that can make replacing color inks with Piezography inks much simpler. There is no similar procedure on MacOS. Instead, QTR RIP is used in a lengthy procedure to print and purge.

So if you are on MacOS – you may wish to perform a virgin printer installation or beg or borrow a PC computer for the ink swapping operation. If you can not – we will give instructions later for MacOS ink change procedures.

If you are performing the virgin installation, follow the Epson instructions substituting the Piezography filled R3000 carts in place of the Epson carts. The cartridges must be filled according to the chart at the bottom of this document.

Windows recommended Ink change procedure

1. Test the printer with Epson inks to verify that it functions perfectly, as described above.
2. Obtain or download and install the Epson Service Adjustment Software. This software may be available from many sources, but we find it convenient that this website offers these software utilities and also Epson printer Service Manuals:2manuals.com The cost is reasonable and they also offer a free Waste Ink Counter reset utility.
3. Remove the Epson ink cartridges and replace with the Piezography filled R3000 cartridges. The cartridges must be filled according to the chart at the bottom of this document.
4. Make sure that the printer is in the Ready state.
5. Launch the Epson Service Adjustment Software and click on the Particular Adjustment Mode.
6. Click on Ink Charge on the Maintenance Menu. In the Ink Charge Menu click on the Ink Charge button. The printer will now perform the original ink initialization. It takes several minutes. About 15ml of ink in each position will be charged through the system. Do not interrupt the printer or system. You will see a confirmation that the ink charge has been completed when it is finished.
7. From this same window you can perform head cleanings and nozzle checks. You may wish to do so. However, if you can not get a clean nozzle check within 3 tries. Allow the printer to settle down for several hours. You can use the regular Epson utiltiy software or the printer’s maintenance menu to perform nozzle checks and head cleans.
8. Verify that you have a perfect nozzle check pattern before printing images. The pattern will consist of six sections, of different shades of gray. The lightest shade, shade #7, is faint.Note: We recommend first flushing the printer to remove the color ink stain from the dampers. You would perform the Ink Charge to move the PiezoFlush through the printer and then a second Ink Charge to move the Piezography inks into the printer. Because shade 7 is such a light gray and is installed in the yellow position, you may see a yellow cast if you do not flush or perform at least two ink charges. The same is with shade 6 which is installed in the light magenta position.
9. Screen shots for Epson Service Adjustment Software:
   (please break this doucment out before viewing screen shots by clicking here)

Mac OS X recommended Ink change procedure

1. If I were you, I would beg, borrow, or procure a PC on which to install the Epson Service Adjustment Software. I actually run Windows on my Macs using Parallels Desktop. I even use this for running StudioPrint RIP. If you can get a hold of a PC – skip the rest of these steps and proceed tp Windows recommended Ink change Procedure (immediately preceeding this section. Otherwise carry on…
2. Remove the Epson ink cartridges and replace with the Piezography filled R3000 cartridges. The cartridges must be filled according to the chart at the bottom of this document.
3. Because there is no Power Clean operation on the R3000 printer it is impossible to change an ink set using the head cleaning operation. It would require perhaps as many as 75 head cleanings to move 15ml of ink through the printer. Therefore the printer must be purged manually using the QTR Calibration Mode and the QTR Purge Ink target.
4. Download the QTR Purge Ink target by clicking here. Launch Photoshop. Open the QTR Purge Ink target. Do not color manage while opening this RGB file. The target is printed using different color management settings in Photoshop according to the version of Photoshop and Mac OSX. Please refer to this document on how to print this target. The target (although RGB) will cause each of the inkjet heads to print 100% ink out. It may take 100 sheets before you see inks without stain.|MAC:
   1. Open the inkseparation file in Photoshop.
   2. Assign Profile > sRGB
   3. Print – Photoshop Manages Color, Print Profile – sRGB
   4. QTR – select Calibration Mode, Ink Limit: 100% and Resolution either 1440 or 2880dpi — this will work for Snow Leopard (10.6) or Lion (10.7) — if you’re still using Leopard (10.5) you must use AdobeRGB instead of sRGB in both places.

   WINDOWS:

   1. Open QTR
   2. Select Tools> Options> Calibration Mode, which will open the inkseparation image file.
   3. Ink Limit: 100% and Resolution either 1440 or 2880dpi then print
   4. Continue printing this target until the inks are printing without stain.

Storage of previously used ink cartridges

You may wish to remove and save one or more cartridges that you have removed from your printer, for use in the future. If you want to store your cartridges for later use, place the removed cartridges in plastic bags, close the bags tightly to minimize ink evaporation, and place the cartridges in a box so that they sit upright, as they do when they are in the printer. Storing a previously opened cartridge on its side or upside down will allow ink to leak out of the air vent holes. We recommend taping over the vent holes to prevent evaporation. Many of our ink cartridge (large and small) come with vent-hole plugs. Make sure to place these vent-hole plugs back into the cartridge before storage. Make sure to remember to remove them when you want to use the cartridge again though!

Note: On small format cartridges, it is very important that you do not allow ink to touch the air inlet filter. Make sure your cartridges remain upright at all times.

Getting started with Piezography printing and QuadtoneRIP.

Now that you have your inks installed, you must print your images through QuadToneRIP shareware software. It is not possible to achieve good results without using QuadToneRIP. Go here to download and install QuadtoneRIP for Mac or PC.

We provide a comprehensive user manual for Piezography along with a set of pre-made curves "profiles" for use with QuadtoneRIP and various fine-art inkjet papers. After installing QuadtoneRIP make sure to ask download and install our free Community Edition set of curves and documentation. This will guide you through the process of installing your Piezograhy printer on both Windows and Mac operating systems so you can print.

Supported Papers

We support an ever evolving list of fine art inkjet papers. You can see the list of officially supported papers here. Please note that this list is new as of 2016 and we have not yet updated every curve for every inkset and every printer and every paper (over 1500 different curves). This will take some time. Many curves work perfectly for a vast amount of differently branded papers. The Hahnemuhle Photo Rag curve (for example) will work just fine on Moab Entrada Rag. If you do not see your paper listed in the pre-made set of curves available from the Piezography Community Edition download, experiment by using a curve made for a similar paper.

Technical Support

We provide free technical support at our forum at http://inkjetmall.com/tech. We also provide direct paid phone support at inkjetmall. Before requesting support please register on our forum and also look through all of the support documents on our Piezography Knowledge Base web page.

Frequently Asked Questions

You may find it very helpful to view our F.A.Q. section for Piezography. This will tell you a lot!