We have had these trials ongoing for a few months now and have sold a couple of the printer kits to customers, asking for their feedback on usage. The trials have surpassed all of our initial expectations in terms of quality of the printed output, reliability and performance. All customers that have purchased have ALL commented on the “improved quality of prints” compared to their previous Canon printer models and that they like the performance of the Epson and of course the rear feed tray.
Looking at the trial from start to finish, we started out nervously expecting the worse, owing to advice from others who had used Epson printers with edible inks and the continual clogging of the print heads that they experienced. We got confident after 2/3 weeks of limited printing trials in house and seeing no issues. We then took a knock or two during initial field production trials on issues of what appeared to be print head clogging, but which was in fact an ink flow issue which we solved fairly quickly, however this made us nervous again.
Since resolving the ink flow issues from cartridges and seeing the improved results with our solution, we entered a phase of complete confidence which still remains. All printers under trials and with customers are performing very well without the need for constant head cleaning required and with only printing once a week where the printers are not used every day. To avoid the printer under utilisation issue that causes head clogging , we advise that the printer be used at least once a week.
Our conclusions are that the WF-3010DW works great as an edible ink printer and handles all media that is available in the market. The thicker media works well through the single sheet rear feed tray and paper settings can accommodate the printing path and print quality.
The idea of the blog on the trial was to see and record if the Epson printer could perform in this edible printing application or not. Along the way we have learnt a thing or two and now that we know that it does work, the tricks, tips and settings will be advised to customers who purchase the product from us, which is as you would expect. We have to keep some things to ourselves for commercial benefit!
The ink flow issue is most certainly an area that we want to keep to ourselves at present. We have come up with a couple of solutions which work very well and since using them, no head cleaning has been required in use, which is a little surprising so we will continue to monitor this. At present we would urge caution at some of the solutions/packages that will be offered when other companies follow us into the market with the Epson printers.
One of the things that is exciting is that we have developed pre-filled single use cartridges that have been filled in the UK and which we will be marketing as part of all packages that we offer. We are also putting together a patent application for an environmentally friendly single use cartridge in this application. In fairness we will use this patent in all cartridges if we can.
The Epson WF-3010DW along with our ink options and the Kopyform range of printable edible media, should prove to be a winner in the edible printing market.
