Canon S450
This is a standard inkjet printer, probably about 8 years old. We printed a bunch of the Costume-Con 26 fliers on it before we got the Phaser 560 (now dead). It includes a BCI-32e photo print head (that can be swapped for the black print head). The standard color print head is borked and color output is way off, but the print head is user-replaceable. If you buy a BCI-31e print head cartridge and swap it in, it will be just fine. Print heads can be cleaned with windex, of all things (and they probably need cleaning).
Canon i9900
This is a 13" carriage medium-format dye-ink photo printer. We printed the 11x17" Evil Genius Hall of Fame posters on it. It needs some TLC to get it back up and running, but is salvageable. It includes an extra print head, a set of nearly-full cleaning cartridges, a bulk ink system and a bunch of Lyson Photonic ink for the bulk ink system. There are three paths to get it back in operation:
- Install a print head, print a few pages with cleaning cartridges until it prints clear, and buy the standard set of BCI-6 Canon ink tanks (Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Yellow, Red and Green) and run standard ink.
- Install a print head, print a few pages with cleaning cartridges until it prints clear, buy a set of refillable BCI-6 cartridges (the CAN-CK02-8 set is the right cartridges) from ink2image and use the bottled Photonic ink (or toss the Photonic and just use the bottled Lyson color-matched ink). The Photonic ink requires some knowledge of ICC profiles and ideally print calibration, it's not standard-color ink, but if you know how, the results are gorgeous and the ink is cheap.
- Install a print head, print a few pages with cleaning cartridges until it prints clear, and install the bulk ink system again and try to persuade it to work It also requires knowledge of ICC profiles and print calibration, and the output is gorgeous. The system is fussy, though.
