Epson R800 - no glossy printing for CDs/DVDs?

[YngwieJM]

I just picked this printer up today and I can't find a way to print using the glossy cartridge on blank media! I bought this thing because I thought it had the ability to "seal" in the ink on my DVD-Rs!

[oldfart13]

Unless you are using inkjet printable media you got it wrong. That's what you need for these printers to work...

[jaxxboss]

That makes no sense. u telling me the printer knows the difference between an ink jet and a non ink jet disc? Granted, he needs ink jet media, but why wouldnt the gloss work on whatever?

[GbMedusa]

According to this extensive review:

The Gloss Optimizer is only available for three media types, Premium Glossy Photo paper, Premium Lustre Photo paper and Premium Semigloss Photo paper. On the other media types the gloss option is greyed out. You can select to turn the Gloss Optimizer on or off and you have a two choices. Auto, covers the image area only and Full which covers the entire page.

[YngwieJM]

You are right GbMedusa. I think I would have bought the R300 if I knew about this ahead of time. I was only buying the printer for disc printing purposes.

[The village idiot]

I take it that you can not select glossy paper when printing CD's?

[YngwieJM]

Yes, that's right village idiot. As soon as you select a CD/DVD as the medium it takes away the gloss option. I bought some art store clearcoat spray today and found that it probably takes quite a bit of practice to get good at having a flawless coat on the disc. Anybody know of a (mostly) foolproof way to clearcoat CDs or DVDs?

[GbMedusa]

I think I know what The Village Idiot is getting at.

Can you set the printer to use a medium other than CD/DVD and still print on a disc? Or does it choke when trying to use the disc tray?

For example, can you tell it to print on Premium Glossy Photo paper as the medium yet still print on a disc?

[YngwieJM]

No - the output tray needs to be moved to a different position to put the CD/DVD tray into the printer so I don't think there's any way to "trick" the R800

[GbMedusa]

So when you put the disc tray in, it automatically changes the medium setting to CD/DVD?

[The village idiot]

Complain to Epson! If enough people complain, they will either give an answer that it won't help, or they will re-write the driver so that you can use the gloss on the disks.

[gmatov]

Idiot,

You, of all pipple here, are aware that it is not the ink, but the medium that makes a "glossy photo".

Photo paper comes in matte, glossy, whatever, and the absorption of ink into the gel coat leaves a "shine" more or less above the ink.

Even Epson's waterproof pigmented inks have to penetrate the gel coat, but, should you wet tour thumb and stroke the paper, or disk, you will, maybe, smear the gel, and kinda obscure the colors, but not wipe off the pigmented color.

Kinda like looking through frosted glass at the colors, hazy, but still there, whereas, with a dye based ink, total smear.

Make yourself a mandrel that you can chuck into an electric drill, mount the disk, turn on the drill, spray to your heart's content.. Little to no chance of contaminating the data side, uniform coverage, but a Sharpie, and calligraphics might be a better bet..

Cheers,

George

[jaxxboss]

I think someone will try to get an empty catridge of whatever color and flush it out a few times so it's good n clean. Then fill it up with some kind of protectant/sealant, then re-apply a different pic off all ONE color- the color of the cartidge that was jury rigged with the sealant. Print that on the disc , but instead of that solid color coming out, it would be the sealant. It's a thought, albeit a crude one. We'll see.

[quasar1963]

I have the R300 and am trying to figure out if there's any way around the waterproof issue either by using a certain brand of printable dvd media OR whether the R800's inks really are less susceptible to a wet finger smudging the discs?
Also, anyone here know why I might be having an issue with the rollers making a vertical 1/2 inch stripe down each side of printed discs?

[gmatov]

I think the stripe issue was figured out a while back in another post.

Defective printer/printer drivers.

Think the guy had to exchange it at least 2 times and still get tech support to give him a fix. Do a search. Check village idiot's posts. He was the nost up on this.

I think the sealent in the cartridge might congeal in the carts, maybe in the print heads, bye bye.

Photo, or pigmented, or dye ink is not glossy in itself. You can print a photo, on glossy photo papey, at draft, or at least in standard mode,and it will still be glossy, but if you pick glossy and print to plain paper, it ain't gonna shine.

Really don't think the printables are coated the same as glossy photo paper, at least the ones you are buying. Don't know if any are. I'm not into it.

Good luck,

George

[The village idiot]

Idiot,

You, of all pipple here, are aware that it is not the ink, but the medium that makes a "glossy photo".

Photo paper comes in matte, glossy, whatever, and the absorption of ink into the gel coat leaves a "shine" more or less above the ink.

Even Epson's waterproof pigmented inks have to penetrate the gel coat, but, should you wet tour thumb and stroke the paper, or disk, you will, maybe, smear the gel, and kinda obscure the colors, but not wipe off the pigmented color.

Kinda like looking through frosted glass at the colors, hazy, but still there, whereas, with a dye based ink, total smear.

Make yourself a mandrel that you can chuck into an electric drill, mount the disk, turn on the drill, spray to your heart's content.. Little to no chance of contaminating the data side, uniform coverage, but a Sharpie, and calligraphics might be a better bet..

Cheers,

George

If you put a glossy coating onto a matte surface, you can indeed make it a glossy surface. You can also seal, to a degree, non-waterproof surfaces to make them more water resistant. The gloss optimiser will make a non-gloss surface into a more "gloss" surface. It should also make the non-waterproof surface into a more water resistant surface, the same way the protective sprays do. The entire reason for the gloss optimiser is to make the printed surface have the same amount of gloss after printing. Pigment inks do not have the same amount of gloss as the surface onto which they are printed since they do not really soak into the paper. This is not the case with dye inks which take on the amount of gloss of the surface. This is most noteable when using non-encapsulated carbon black ink printed onto a glossy paper. Hold the print so that you look across the top of surface, you will without question be able to see the less reflective surface where the carbon particles are printed. A similar effect happens with the colored pigments, but to a lesser degree. So if you spray the entire picture with the gloss optimiser, then the entire picture will have the same amount of gloss. In theory, since the gloss optimiser has the same waterproof characterists of the pigment inks, then it might help to seal the disk coating if you spay the enire disk, and over spray to include all edges. Again, this is a long shot since it has been determined that the ink receptive coating is not a waterproof coating.

You may also get these disks to be more "glossy" by first soaking them in water, and laying them print side down or a piece of glass or smooth (glossy) metal. This was one way to make glossy photo prints once upon a time. After they dry, then print on them. You may also be able to "imprint" a logo in the disks with this method.

[The village idiot]

I think someone will try to get an empty catridge of whatever color and flush it out a few times so it's good n clean. Then fill it up with some kind of protectant/sealant, then re-apply a different pic off all ONE color- the color of the cartidge that was jury rigged with the sealant. Print that on the disc , but instead of that solid color coming out, it would be the sealant. It's a thought, albeit a crude one. We'll see.

Good thought. I would choose the black cart. You can print near black by using the CMY colors together. Then run the disk through again and print an extra large disk all covered in black, which is now your protective spray. I'm not going to suggest any type of coating to try, but I'm sure someone will try something. At some point in time, you will be able to buy the clear gloss in bulk.

[The village idiot]

I tried a test... If the pigment ink is applied thick enough, then it will give you a semi-gloss finish. Of course I applied this with a brush, not a printer, so getting it thick was easy.

When it dries I'll check it under the faucet and compare the results to the last time I did the same with dye inks.

[gmatov]

Village,

I hope I'm too civilized ( I know I'm too ignorant of the subject ) to say "Nonsense" to some of your reply.

When I print a photo with my HP, with pigmented black, they come out as glossy as the paper quality will allow, and I mean Premium Photo or Glossy Photo.

When I use the wrong BRAND of paper, meaning aftermarket, some from shows, some from Sam's Club, they print terribly, the inks clump into droplets, basically appearing as though viewed througha screen.

The inks are not formulated for the gelcoat on that paper, will not momentarily dissolve, hence sink into and incorporate with the gel coat.

I get the same thing when I try HP Photo paper in my Canon. Will not print. Canon, Epson, Kodak, beautiful prints, literally cannot tell from a photo.

There is no ink, that I have ever heard of, in the consumer marketplace, that will put a glossy finish on a non-glossy surface, ie., plain paper, or matte finish CD-DVD disk.

If the disk did not have a glossy gel coat, it will not be glossy.

To do this, you would need an ink with a vehicle that is of the makeup of varnish or laquer or shellac, or even paint. These are all surface coatings. They would be glossy, but I do not think we will ever see them.

For one thing, all the major printer mfgs sell their own spec'd and branded papers, at about 10 bucks a 20 pack. If you could take these inks (paints?), and print on card stock, or plain paper, what would they do with that half of their business?

The less reflective areas where you see the non-gloss of the pigmented black is one of the criteria which causes me to return packages of paper that are ad'ed as "Suitable for ALL Printers". I have never had a refusal to refund my money when I showed them how to hold the print and look at this mess.

My good prints, with pigmented black (wish I knew if the pigmented colors would work!!!) all are absorbed into the gel coat and are uniformly glossy.

As to photos, as in film type prints, they were dried on a super smooth drum to put back the gloss that was removed when the print was developed and fixated. I don't know if that gel coat was only soluble in the chemicals used for developing a print. The photosensitive silver particles in the gel on those was chemically converted to the color spectrum by the developer, and it could not dissolve it, as it woud wash off, but still had to penetrate to react with the particles

Spraying a paint, or clear coat with a cleaned and refilled cartridge might be interesting. A piezo Epson printhead is one thing, but I wonder what would be the resuld of a Bubble Jet doing the same. Instanteous heating to boil the smidgeon of water based ink would probably ignite the volatiles in the sealant, and as you printed the clear coat, mini machine gun, faster than the mini-guns of Viet Nam fame. Till the print heads gave their own last little explosion and died.

I don't think "making them glossy" with a smooth surface would workeither, as the moisture in the inks, pigmented or dye, would cause the wasn't supposed to be glossy to "fluff up", revert to its original surface finish, more or less plain paper surface finish.

I don't know if any of this makes sense to you.

Cheers,

George

Sorry, forgot to add a clear coat still sounds like the only way you are going to even approach your goals. We've gone over that already.

BTW, try wetting a piece of photo paper and sticking it on a piece of glass to smooth it. See if you can lift it from the glass when it has dried. I put a too newly printed pic on my scanner, left it there, and had to tear it off, scrape the glass, and wash the remainder of the gel coat off the glass platen. Might have the same prob gluing a disk to a piece of glass. Maybe not, as they do not have a photo gel coat, which IS water soluble.

[jaxxboss]

gmatov, DAMN!. You writing a book here or what!
I dont know if this is about glossy or sealing the ink in or both, but I dont care about glossy as much as getting the ink to beome water(read-child)proof.

[gmatov]

Jax,

I feel the same way, don't know how to express my point without saying "Bullshit" and adding nothing.

Spray 'em. For the life of me, I cannot see how you are going to make a water soluble coating, or surface, non-water soluble. hell, wax 'em. Spray them good with some furniture polish. See if that works. The ads show you water beading up on a table after you polish it with "Lemon Pledge" or whatever. If it beads up, it ain't soaking in. and if it ain't soaking in, it ain't dissolving the printed surface.

I don't care!. I don't print mine. I kinda like my Sharpy. But if I can help, or throw a monkey wrench into an idea that is flawed, maybe it will help.

I don't know what printables cost. Is it too, too much to experiment with?

Buy the ink the big replicators use and silk screen 'em. Them'd be plain disks. Paint will stick to plastic.

Cheers,

George