Since I am toy crazy the next thing I have set my sights on is a printer for edible images. I have a biiiiig birthday coming up so this could be my present I recon. I have read the article here on CC, and looked on the internet, but there seems to be so many different options out there.
I would probably mostly use it for accents for cakes, rather doing whole sheet cake photos, for textures and for doing logo cookies and things like that.
Please tell me, what do you own? Do you like your system, would you recommend it based on what I think I would use it for.
I have a Canon printer that was purchased from Best Buy on a sale. The edible ink tanks for it are easily available.
This printer/ink tank cross reference list might help you: http://kopykake.com/documents/PrinterInks-Xref.pdf
I have a Epson C88+, and it works great. Don't worry about a high end expensive printer. Any printer that does decent photo prints will work fine.
If you do go with an Epson, get the ink cartridge reseter chip when you order. You see, Epson ink cartridges (and some others) have built in counters on the cartridge that keep track of how much the cartridge is used. And when it thinks it's out of ink, you can't print ANYTHING even if there's still ink in the cartridge (or if it's the black one that's out and you want to use the 3 colors to print, sorry, no can do). I had this problem and ended up 2-day shipping new cartridges (and the chip) so I could get a cake done.
I have a Canon Pixma and I love it!! I get my supplies from www.icingimages.com . I definitely recommend the Canon!
Hey miriel,
can I use a used printer?
I have a cannon bubble ink jet printer sitting in my office which I have not used in some time. May I use this baby and do you think it's safe to use?
TIA
I wouldn't use a printer that has been used with regular ink. It will not be food safe.
I had a cannon printer (pixma) and got rid of it. I only got like 1 order a month and even though I soaked it and cleaned it and treated it with kid gloves, it never printed clean. The inks were constantly clogged. I spent a fortune on kopycake supplies. Just wasn't worth it. Now when I get a photo order, i ask for two weeks notice and I order them from a place online for 8-10 bucks. Saves me a lot of headache and money, as those inks are NOT cheap!
I guess if you get a lot of orders, and can keep the printer in use all the time, its worth it. but for what orders I got, it wasn't worth it.
I had a cannon printer (pixma) and got rid of it. I only got like 1 order a month and even though I soaked it and cleaned it and treated it with kid gloves, it never printed clean. The inks were constantly clogged. I spent a fortune on kopycake supplies. Just wasn't worth it. Now when I get a photo order, i ask for two weeks notice and I order them from a place online for 8-10 bucks. Saves me a lot of headache and money, as those inks are NOT cheap!
I guess if you get a lot of orders, and can keep the printer in use all the time, its worth it. but for what orders I got, it wasn't worth it.
Thanks, you answered my question before I asked it.
I have a system and have experience, and solved most of the problems in this thread.
Yes, you must use a new printer than has never had regular ink thru it. Regular ink is not food safe.
I have a Canon i860, photo printer. Cost new $149 I think. I sent DH out with instructions to buy a Canon printer and this is what he came home with. It would not have been my choice and I would not recommend this model.
It uses 5, yes 5 ink tanks, so it costs more to buy new sets of foodsafe inks.
I purchase inks and icing sheets from PhotoFrost.
Here's the important part: I put the ink tanks in the printer to run the image. Once I'm satisfied with the image, then I take the ink tanks out and replace them with head cleaner tanks. No more clogs, unless the cleaner cartridge tanks run dry. The cleaner heads stay in the printer at all times unless I'm actually running an image. The comapnies who sell ink and cleaner tanks will tell you not to do this. The Old timers in the cake biz will tell you its the only thing that works. According to Canon if you use their printers for food safe inks you void your warranty.
I've let my Epson sit for several weeks between prints and have not had a problem with clogging. Maybe only some printers have that problem.
It's a great toy and I love having the option of printing things to put on the cake instead of doing everything in frosting (or gumpaste or fondant), and it's a major time saver.
Thank you all so much for all the excellent information you all came up with. I am going to sit down tonight and digest and look at the various models you are all taking about. I may post back and ask more questions then. Thanks again!
I just bought a Canon Pixma 3300 from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. This is one of the newer models on the market, and it cost about $75. I bought the ink and frosting sheets from KopyKake. I have tried a couple of images, and they worked perfectly.
One of my other hobbies is photograpy, and I have had both Epson and Canon photo printers. I have a Canon presently. I do prefer the Canon to the Epson for printing high-resolution photos, but I don't think there should be a difference for the kind of printing that we would be doing for cakes. With both printers I had to run the program to clean the nozzles if I let them sit for a while without using them. I suspect I will have the same situation with the new printer and the edible ink. I think it is just part of letting a printer sit without using it.
One other thing that I did take into account was the number of printer cartridges. On some of the smaller printers there are only two cartridges - a color and a black and white - while some of the larger printers have a cartridge for each color. The two-cartridge system is cheaper, but the disadvantage is if you consistantly print pictures that have a lot of a single color such as red you will have to replace the entire color cartridge when the red runs out regardless of whether there are still other colors of ink in the cartridge. If you have separate cartridges for each color then you will only have to replace the color which ran out rather than the entire cartridge.
I ended up buying one of the lower-end printers (not enough difference in quality to justify a high-end one), but I got one which had multiple color cartridges.
I didn't mean to write a book, but I just went through this same process of picking out a printer. I hope this helps.
I've never had a clogging or printing problem with my Cannon Pixma. Sometimes I may print 5 to 7 pictures a week and then I may go a month withouth using it without any problems and I do leave the cartriges in all the time! Mine only uses two tanks - black and color, so it was really not that expensive to get started.
I've been trying to figure out what printer I want to go with too. I will not use it frequently, but want to have it handy. Thanks to all for replying to this post. Kopykakes will be at the ICES convention in Omaha, think I will talk to them!
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