Let's revisit DVD label printers

[Dave McElderry]

I print directly to my CDs and DVDs with my Epson Stylus Photo R800. When it works it does a great job, but in the past few months I've not been able to get past head clogs with any amount of cleaning, which is a terrible waste of ink. I'm ready to pitch it to the curb. Printing my own photos is something I very seldom do anymore, so I'm thinking that I should be looking for something that just specializes in printing to discs. I suppose I could purchase another inkjet printer with only disc printing in mind, but I don't want to deal with the clogs again, and my disc printing is low volume. When searching for specialized disc printers I find that the only thing available for any reasonable amount of money, that gets decent reviews, is the Dymo DiscPainter. The print images posted on Amazon indicate some problems with concentric circular banding problems. Of course it's hard to tell what the print job actually looks like in real life. This unit has been around for a while. For a long time I've been thinking that they would introduce a new model but that's not happening.

I'd appreciate any general thoughts and experience regarding this unit, or just printers that print to disc in general.

[Chuck Engels]

Dave, Do you use only Epson Ink or do you use some other brand?
The clogging has always been a problem with Epson printers as long as I can remember.
I have gone through a few of them myself over the years and finally just switched to HP, no more problems.

I do have the R220 for printing DVDs and CDs though. It has been working well for a few years now and no clogging problems. I only use Epson ink and that does help I'm sure.

[Dave McElderry]

Only Epson ink Chuck. Always been a believer in sticking with the manufacturer's inks in my printers. Chuck, is the 220 a photo printer, or a standard inkjet? I'm wondering if the photo inks are more of a problem regarding clogging. I did just find out that Dymo doesn't make any drivers for Vista 64 for the DiscPainter, so it's obvious they have no intention of keeping it current with new technology.

[Chuck Engels]

It is a Epson Stylus R220 Photo Printer, lots of bad reviews at Amazon but I like it myself.
Probably not much of a difference between this one and yours.

Have you looked at
http://www.gotmedia.com/verity-systems- ... inter.html
http://www.noblehousecd.com/Products/GX ... -1000.aspx
HP Printer

Other HP Printers http://www.hp.com/united-states/consume ... abels.html

[Bob]

I had an Epson 1280 that clogged all the time. It finally got so bad I got rid of it a couple of years ago. I replaced it with an Epson R380 photo printer which has been trouble free so far. Haven't had a clog yet. I turn it off between photo printing sessions (when I had the 1280, an Epson tech told me the head seats when the printer is off which helps to keep the ink from drying in the head). I have a laser printer which I use for text printing. The biggest issue I have with it is that it drinks ink like crazy.

[Chuck Engels]

I also keep my R220 turned off between printing sessions, maybe that makes a difference.

[Dave McElderry]

Bob, my Epson prints incredible photos, and for the first couple of years that I owned it I thought it was the greatest thing around. I've also heard of the importance of turning it off for that reason, and have been doing so. However, I've also heard that turning it on and off uses a lot more ink. I've never read of any user techniques that will clear the clogs if the regular cleaning cycle doesn't work, so I will probably be tossing this one too.

[ScrugneysGundogs]

I've got two of the Epson printers - the R200 & R260. Only the newer one has ever clogged on me. However, once I started using Lightscribe to label my discs, I haven't used the printed labels any more. (Not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just my personal preference to use Lightscribe.)

[Dave McElderry]

It worries me when people tell me that some Epsons never clog and others they've had problems with. I already have one that clogs and I'm one of those guys whose luck would be to end up with another.

[RJ Johnston]

I gave away my Epson 220. It was wasteful, wasteful, wasteful. My mother had an Epson printer and it was wasteful, wasteful, wasteful. She wrote a letter to the company, but never got a response.

[Bobby]

I still use my R220, but I am now using cheap non-Epson ink carts. I have been getting them for about $40 for two packs and about $60 for four packs. They seem to work OK for DVD labels, and actually seem to clog a bit less than Epson carts.

[Ken Jarstad]

I use an HP J6450 AIO for all regular printing and an HP D5160 exclusively for light-duty DVD/CD printing. I use the standard black and tri-color cartridges - never bothered with the photo cartridges. They have always been good on ink usage and no clogging. The D5160 is the cheapy disk printer which has been replaced with the current D5460 5 cartridge model. The bigger brother to it is the D7560, also a 5 cart unit. I don't know how well the newer series will be compared to the two cart model but I think I will pay a little more next time for the D7560 in hopes that it will be a better unit. It looks to me like these are the only two budget printers that print on DVDs from HP.

[Dave McElderry]

Thanks for the reply Ken. The 5460 model number seemed familiar; then I realized that it was the same printer that Chuck provided a link for. I'm using the rest of the ink cartridges that I have in stock for my Epson before making a final decision. You're right about the number of low-priced offerings from HP being limited. I had an HP Photosmart that had clogging problems, and the printing wasn't very wonderful from the beginning, so I'm cautious about the HP inkjets. That's probably unfair because I don't know how much technology ends up being shared between models. The average guy doesn't really know when they've truly improved the engineering, or if it's just old engineering built into a new package. I wish the HP inkjets were as trouble-free as their laserjets.

When you say that you'd go for the next higher up model in hopes that it would be a better unit, is there anything in particular that you think would be higher quality?