Hi,

I just got a epson r200 dvd/cd printer and was wondering if someone could give me a rough estimate on how many graphic intensive dvd can be printed before replacing an ink cart?

Thanks,
Ryan.

whatever the average is.. it'll likely be about half that for the initial ink cartridge.. the ones that come with printers and such are always much lower capacity... unless you bought new in the first place, and then you're set, but sorry still don't know the answer. ;)

I have that printer. The ink is very expensive. I haven't used the DVD printer function yet, but I'd imagine it's heavy on the ink. I'd probably think about 100 copies or so. Probably more, but it's just a guess. Considering the price of ink, it's probably better to just use it for special DVDs and get your mass copies done from a printing shop. There's like 5 or 6 cartriges in there, each at $20-30 a piece (Canadian funds, mind you). I recently replaced my ink and paid $160w/tax (CAN) for a full set. I'd imagine getting them printed professionally wouldn't be too much more expensive than that for larger orders. Especially if you have to replace the ink twice.
That's just my estimate.

For large orders it would be worth looking into silk screening.. ;)

I printed over 2000 copies of A Joker's Card (DVD) and 2000 copies of A Joker's Card (CD soundtrack) with the epson 200

I buy cheap inks $6.95 each ones and the quality is has yet to be of a difference.

What I learned from this is:

1. get replication instead of doing it urself if you are doing over 500 (it's more cost effective)

2. after about 750 prints within a week, the cd tray started to show signage of wear and tear and it started to become 'manual inserting' instead of it would go through automatically.

3. Epson warranty changed, they will no longer 'replace' the printer first, now you have to send it to their service center, take times and cost $ (shipping it back and forth, it's about $7 each way). They would replace the cd tray for free the first time, but after that, the cd tray is $9 each

4. Printing the CD or DVD with TEXT quality would suffice, because when you have water, it will smear, so it really doesn't make a difference with highter quality cd/dvd print. The PrintCD software usually prints in photo quality, you can fine tune that to TEXT quality and you should be fine. (besides that, you hardly can notice the difference)

5. R200 is designed for casual print, so don't overabuse it like I did. ;) That said, R200 is a GREAT printer

6. Average speaking, with TEXT quality, I print about 5 mins per CD/DVD (full color) which for ink wise, that can be about 100-200 CDs or DVDs printed (depending on the color used), usually, you can print about 1000 color pages before you have to replace the ink. Although I must admit I don't remember how much ink used for 4000 total CD/DVD prints, 2000 DVD Covers in color, 1000 Insert Sheets in color, but I do remember changing inks not too often, probably 3-5 times

Hope all these helps.

Johnny