HP Z3200 User Manual
HP DesignJet Z3200
User Report
by Julian Mussi
© Spectraow, Inc.
415-382-8681
Nov 2008
PREFACE
In this article I will be examining the HP Z3200, HP’s latest Large format printer. The Z3200 is essentially an update of the Z3100
released in late 2006. Externally the printer appears virtually identical to it’s predecessor, yet internally the printer has been revised and
upgraded. Perhaps the most obvious change Z3200 is the reformulated “Chromatic Red Type 73” cartridge which replaces the standard
“Red Type 70” of the Z3100. The Z3200 also benets from numerous tweaks to the drivers, hardware, and printer rmware that contribute to creating a noticeable better product. Due to the many shared similarities between the Z3100 and Z3200 many portions of this
review are borrowed directly from my original review of the Z3100, all sections have been updated, the screen shots are new, and the
conclusions has been rewritten to reect the most recent offerings from the competition.
PRINTER HARDWARE
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS AND SETUP
The Z3200 is a beautiful piece of machinery. If all it could do was toast bread it would still be an achievement in industrial design. Its
smooth black sloping lines give it an aerodynamic appearance, and I’m happy HP invested some time and energy into this aspect of their
product.
The box that the Z3200 ships in is identical to the Z3100 and HP again wins point in my book for best packaging design. The printer is
easily unpacked by one person with minimal difculty. The shipping crate’s top is removed revealing the printer, and all the components
logically grouped together and easy to access. The stand, which is included for both 24” and 44” models, is sturdy and easy to constructs.
It is then screwed to the base of the printer (the printer is shipped upside down) and then easily ipped by two people. I actually managed
to unpack, assemble, and ip the 44” model myself.
Once the printer is assembled and plugged into a power source, you can then begin the somewhat lengthy setup process. Once the printer
is powered on you will be prompted to load the printers 12 cartridges, (1)photo black (2)matte black, (3)grey, (4)light grey, (5)light cyan,
(6)magenta, (7)light Magenta, (8)yellow, (9)(NEW)chromatic red, (10)green, (11)blue, and last but not least a (12)gloss enhancer. The 24”
Z3200 ships with 69mil cartridges while the 44” model ships with the standard 130mil carts. This means that the 44” Z3200 ships with
about $400.00 of extra ink, not a trivial sum. After the cartridges are installed the printer begins to charge the lines with ink, a process
that takes several minutes. When this process was completed, the ink levels for all of the inks were around 80% full on the smaller 69mil
tanks.
After the ink carts are loaded the print heads must be installed. HP uses what they refer to a semi-permanent print heads. What does this
mean exactly? By contrast Epson uses a different print head technology, micro piezo, allowing for permanent print heads. They are not
user replaceable, but are designed to last the life of the printer, if one does malfunction its replacement is a sizeable percentage of what
a new printer would cost. Both companies will argue for the relative superiority of the technology, and both have merit. Whatever the
system, clogged print heads will lead to banding and degradation in image quality, and must be remedied. Most Epson large formt print-
ers have additionally required users to clean the heads through an ink purge, which is both time consuming and expensive. Thermal print
heads by their very nature breakdown over time, which of course necessitates the use of replaceable heads. To avoid having to replace
the print head when only a small number of nozzles are bad, the printer maps defective nozzles and uses alternate nozzles to pick up the
slack. When too many of these nozzles become inoperable you will then have to replace the head. Since very little ink is purged through
the print heads the printer does not have a require large maintance tanks.
Changing heads in the Z3200 is a quick process, taking about a minute to remove the old head and install the new one. There is one head
for every two colors, at a cost of about $70 each (list). Each head is warranteed for 1000 mils of ink but is expected to push through 2500
mils of ink before it needs replacement. Since each cart contains 130mils of ink this means you will likely go through many complete
sets of ink before any of the heads will need to be replaced. Or viewed another way, about 20 tanks could be run through a head before
it is expected to fail. That’s a fair amount of ink.
After the heads have been installed the printer nishes it’s rather lengthy initialization process during which it buzzes and hums. This is
a good time to download the printer drivers on your system. After the printer nishes initializing, the basic hardware setup is nished.
You should then load the roll of paper that ships with the printer and run the paper feed and head alignment from the printer menu. This
is a crucial step, and will help avoid banding issues and ensure maximum image quality.
INK COSTS
Aside from the 69ml starter set on the 24” printer, all ink cartridges are 130 ml. The cartridges are available as a single cartridge or in
a twin pack. HP also charges less for the gloss optimizer, which as I’ll discuss later, is a good thing.
Assuming manufacture supplied list prices let’s look at some very basic ink set costs (though most suppliers, including Spectraow, sell for well below list prince).
HP DESIGNJET Z3200 EPSON STYLUS PRO
7/9880
Number of installed inks 11 colors
1 gloss enhancer (GE)
Ink cartridge size 130 ml 110/220 ml 150/350/700 ml
MSRP cost per cart $83 single / $62 GE
$132 double/$99 GE
($66 each)/($49.5 GE)
Total volume of ink in
printer
Cost per replacement set $975 single
1560 ml 880 (110 ml carts)
$1551 double
8 colors 11 colors
$70 for 110 ml
$112 for 220 ml
1760 (220 ml carts)
$560 for 110 ml
$896 for 220 ml
Epson 7/9900
$89.95 for 150 ml
$159.95 for 350 ml
$279.95 for 700 ml
3850 ml (300 ml carts)
7700 ml (700 ml carts)
$1759 for 350 ml tanks
$3079 for 700 ml tanks
Cost per mil of ink $.62 for single
$.49 for double
One of the questions I get a lot has to do with how much does it cost to make a print on printer A as opposed to printer B. While it’s
easy enough to generate an estimate that will likely be correct within $ 0.10 eighty percent of the time on a letter size sheet, trying to
get any more exact is often an unrealistic goal. Many factors inuence the cost of a nal print: Driver vs. RIP, prole, media, quality
settings, ink waste, resolution. As you can see from the above chart the actual cost of the ink is fairly similar between the Z3200 and
the 7/9880, with the Epson 7/9900 coming in lower when the 700 ml carts are purchased. For the time being, however, let’s assume that
using the same media, at similar quality, using the OEM inks, that most of the printers will be fairly close to each other in the actual
cost of consumables it takes to make a print. Lets make this assumption so that we can for a moment look at some of the other issue that
affect the cost of a print.
One of the biggest ancillary costs is ink waste. Older Epson K3 printers used a lot of ink in the course of their standard duty cycle. One
of the biggest complaints with the Epson X600/X800/X880 series printers was the need to manually swap black inks when switching
between matte and photo papers. On a Epson 9880 changing from photo to matte black uses around 100 ml of ink. On the Z3200 matte
and photo black are loaded at all times, the printer knows what ink to use based on the settings in the driver or RIP, and no switching is
required. The new Epson Stylus Pro 7900 also has both blacks installed at the same time, but still has to switch between inks, requiring
a bout three minutes of time and a few ml of wasted ink. While this new system is MUCH better than the previous models it’s still not
as elegant as the HP method. A head cleaning cycle on the 7/9880 LF Epson printers will use around 10 mils of ink, the power cleaning
uses around 70mils of ink. The Z3100 in our ofces has been on almost continuously since it’s arrival more than a year ago, and aside
from an initial head cleaning, the printer has needed virtually no user initiated maintenance. HP has taken a very proactive approach
to maintaining the print system. First, at regular intervals the heads expel very very small amounts of ink (less than 1 ml) this keeps
the heads clean and helps to eliminate clogs. At the same time a sensor in the printer monitors what nozzles are ring and performs the
nozzle remapping when needed. I like the fact that this routine maintenance has been made completely transparent, meaning that the
printer is always in an optimal state, ready to use. If needed there is always the option of initiating maintenance tasks manually from
the control panel.
$.63 for 110 ml
$.51 for 220 ml
$.46 for 350 ml
$.40 for 700 ml
Because of the expanded color set the Z3200 is typically more effeciant in it’s use of ink than the Epson X880 series printers. Where a
typical eight color printer must mix cyan and yellow to produce a green the Z3200 can use a single drop of green. The gloss enhancer
being the notable exception. I think people are more tolerant of the ink cost when it ends up on paper, rather than wasted due to head
cleaning.
PAPER FEED
The Z3200 has a rear loading roll paper path and a top loading single sheet feeder. The sheet path is accessed by a sliding cover that
facilitates the loading of the paper and blends into the chassis of the printer when not in use. This mechanism has been slightly simplied
from the Z3100 but remains fundamentally the same. Once you get used to the way it works, feeding sheets is relatively easy, although I
do have a few complaints. The rst is that it is difcult to load smaller sheets (tabloid and smaller) without some degree of skew, requir-
ing the user to manually align the sheet to a blue line of the front of the printer. There is a very small raised guide to align the paper
against when feeding it into the printer, but it’s not quite enough. Also very thin sheets of paper or very heavy stocks are more difcult
to load correctly. For ne art paper with rough edges there is an option to bypass the skew check for sheets.
Roll paper is fed in a straight path from the rear of the printer. The plus side of this is that the paper path is both short and straight. Roll
paper is feed into the paper path until some resistance is felt, the printer then automatically advances the paper. The feeding mechanism
is somewhat picky, and unless the paper is fed perfectly straight you will be prompted to raise the paper lever so that an automatic paper
alignment correction can be done. If the automatic correction fails (as is often the case for thick media) you will be prompted to manually correct the skew, which requires aligning the paper to the blue line. With a little practice I can get the media to load automatically
about 80% of the time. Compared to the HP 5000 series printers this system is so much better that I would be hard pressed to complain.
Compared to the simple methods of loading on the Epson 9880 and the exceptional system on the Epson 7/9900 I nd the HP system
mildly frustrating.
Whenever a new type of paper is loaded, you will be prompted to select whether the media being loaded is sheet or roll, and the type
of paper being loaded. The paper type is selected from a list of media types arranged by category. It is important that the printer know
what type of media is loaded since the information is used to link the paper to a paper preset. The paper preset tells the printer what ICC
prole, calibration, ink type and amount to use.
Overall the paper feed system is well suited to the range of media used in the ne art and photographic markets. The system is not
without it’s frustrations and is not particularly well suited for super high volume production environments, or especially odd media types.
The placement of the roll in the rear of the printer was not a good call. I understand the reasons for doing so, but the result is a loading
process that is annoying at best and for some it will be a major hassle. In almost all production environment’s printers are crammed
against walls in crowded small spaces. Another thing to note is that the HP does not use a vacuum system to keep the paper at when
moving under the print path, but instead uses a feed system that includes a star wheel system. On the Z3100 these occasionally produced
marks on the print. So far I have yet to see any marks from the star wheels on prints from the Z3200. My feeling is that the marks are a
non issues on HP branded media, or when time is taken to ensure the correct settings are used when creating a media set for a 3rd party
media. If the marks were a problem even after altering the print setting, you now have the option of lifting the rollers for specic media.
I’m fairly condent this will give users enough options at their disposal to allow better support for third party media.
PRINTER CONTROL PANEL
All the printer’s controls on the Z3200 are located on the front of printer, grouped around a large monochrome LCD panel. From here
you control all the standard functionality of the printer, such as loading and unloading paper, selecting media types, and performing
color calibration. I like detailed information accessible from the display. Everything from the warranty status of the inks, to the amount
of ink each head has red, to the rmware version and connectivity information is easily found and clearly displayed. It’s nice to have
this much functionality available without having to move to the computer interface. It’s easy to change and congure the IP address.
Even basic color management functionality can be controlled from this menu. I also like HP’s use of animations on the LCD panel to
walk you through simple tasks such as loading paper, and changing print heads. This makes the printer a little friendlier in multi-user
environments where many people may only have brief contact with the printer. Of course this sophistication comes at a cost, making
the printer much more computer like. Partly because of the integrated 80 gb hard drive it requires a bit more time to start-up and in my
experience is slightly more prone to “crashing”. This occurs more with third party RIP’s, but has happened a few times with the drivers.
In all the interface is easy to use and offers a great deal of control without having to retreat to the nearest console to see what’s going
on in the printer.
BUILD QUALITY
Over many years HP has established a track record of building reliable, often overbuilt, easily maintainable printers. Compared to the
HP4000 or Z6100, the Z3200 is a lightweight, and reects the design philosophy of a photo/ne art printer rather than a production
printer. When the Z3100 was released there were some problems. Quite a number of users, including Spectraow, had to have the paper
feed sensors replaced. Also some users were troubled by appearance of star wheel marks on their prints due to the roller system used.
Since the Z3200 is an evolution of the Z3100 platform, many of these issues have been addressed, and I would expect that this launch
will go much smoother. Most of the issues I encountered with Z3100 printers made themselves known very early on, were addressed,
and afterwards functioned reliably. The stand is very robust and assembly is elegantly simple. The outer case is almost entirely plastic
yet feels solid. The paper basket is also well thought out. This printer gives the impression of being well built, and after having spent
considerable time using the Z3100, I have no reason to think that the durability of the Z3200 will not be equaly good, or better.
HARDWARE SUMMARY
The HP Z3200 is a well designed, functional print platform. The hands off approach to maintenance is rst-rate, almost eliminating any
downtime, and reducing ink waste to the bare minimum. The placement of the roll is still one of the primary annoyances I have with the
unit. Paper loading over all is average, but should not pose any serious limitations for most users. Cost per print is quite good considering
the relatively small size of the cartridges. It would have been nice to see a larger size cartridge option.
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