I got out of work early, so I stopped by tonight and took at shot at both the 1055CM and the 650C.
tl;dr version: 1055CM good, 650C should be put to pasture
1055CM: Tip-top shape. I took the roll that was in the 650 and put it in the 1055CM. Loaded and fed beautifully, ran a couple of setup steps, got it on the network, printed to it over the network from my laptop, and run a couple of topo maps (with and without the sat photos) to check out the quality. It’s great on the line drawings, and was A-OK on the sat photos. It does not compete with the Epson for photos (both paper and ink) but is perfect for things like this – you can’t fold the Epson paper after all, and this paper is 20# rather than 60# (and therefore 1/3 the weight to carry around.) The GIS/Civic Committee people might be very interested in this for map printing purposes.
I think that we have a winner, and should start looking at how to get this one into our rotation. Right now, I unhooked it from the network to prevent someone from accidentally printing to it. From what I could tell, it was not broadcasting a name, so I’m not sure how someone would accidentally print to it, but if we want to be extra sure, we can talk to the Network Committee about getting static IPs for the printer and attached computer, and then use the ACL on the printer to have it only listen to that computer. (Someone could still spoof the IP and print to it, but we aren’t trying to harden it.)
There are two spindles for it (not cross compatible with the 650C, as I was hoping, although the paper is) and we can easily keep inkjet white and tracing paper for it. I think that it is likely that the paper and ink will be less expensive than the Epson, so we can offer it at a lower $$ materials rate.
650C: I got it back onto its stand, although it is missing a lot of hardware. It was stable enough for testing, so I fired it up. The LED display is dim, but readable (barely.) If we put it into service, we’ll need to address that. I wasn’t able to test the quality, because the pens were all dead. That’s more likely than not just from sitting idle. If we replace the ink carts, the printheads are included in that as the pen assembly. It’s a consumable part. That would mean us investing $160 in new pens for it, though, with the chance that something else besides that and the display is also bad.
The mechanics seemed to be fine – when I finally remembered the process for loading the paper, it loaded fine (although the older process is more involved and finicky than the 1055CM) and the pens moved fine, although they weren’t dropping any ink.
I would recommend that we pass on trying to put the 650C into service. It’s old, and completely obsoleted by the 1055CM. The paper is exactly the same, but feeding it ink would probably be more expensive. It would need repairs on the display, it’s missing hardware on the stand, the stand was damaged when it was disassembled, it’s harder to use, and most likely has significantly more use on it (and therefore less lifecycle left).
Most importantly, I don’t think it would get enough use to keep the pens from dying again from drying out, and we would just end up not using it, because the few times the 1055CM was tied up, the pens would be dried out and need replacement. (This was a consistent problem at my old job were we had a 755, which is an evolutionary model from the 650. The 1055 is from a different family). I think that if we didn’t have the 1055CM, it would be worth the trouble of fixing and would get enough use to stay in service, but with the windfall of the new machine, it should move on to its next opportunity.