Printer research

[Prepper]

I'm looking for a new printer to replace a 10 year old Epson 7900 24" one we have. This is the 2nd one of these we've had and it's lasted us 11 years now. We used it for proofing in an in-house print operation and for signs, calendars and posters. The largest sizes 24x36 for the most part. Only using it for the signs, calendars and posters now since we no longer do in-house printing at all.
The Epson has been great but is really expensive to keep it in inks, and fresh inks at that since we only use it about once a month now.
Is there a 24" printer out there that we could use this sporadically and it stay good to go without the inks heads drying up, or that doesn't cost $100 per ink cart to replace them? I have just started this search and I saw an Epson SureColor T5170 for $2k that only has the 4 ink carts and are $46 for CMY 50ml and $63 for K 80ml carts which would be much less to replace those twice a year versus the 7900 with it's 11 carts at $100+ each.
Hoping to get some input and direction maybe from anyone on here that wishes to help. This forum was always a good place to look for help with color management, plates, papers, and just anything printing in general.
Thanks

 

[narseman]

Seems to me, you could save a lot of money by making friends with a local printer, who can output what you need, once, or couple times a month. Maybe with a wide format printer. And these days, it doesn't even need to be local. Though personally I'd like to be able to visit face to face.

 

[repro_glenn]

Our 3 year old Epson SureColor P8000, is more prone to ink heads drying up / clogging than the old 900 series we had before.
Some of the inks are barely half used up when they go past the use by date. We also found that the Max ∂H drifted significantly (3.9) when using out of date inks.
We've been told the ink goes sludgy when it's not used, shaking the cartridges regularly helps.
I think you need to be using the newer models every day, we don't and it's causing problems.

 

[TJPrinter]

I've had good luck with the Canon imagePROGRAF Pro series. No clogging of the heads after extended periods of sitting idle. Not sure I'd have one taking up the space to use once a month though. I do work for another copy shop that needs larger prints every once in a while it helps me out and him too. I'm sure you can find someone in your area that is willing to do the same. If you must have a machine and it's going to sit without use you need to run a file on it weekly to keep the ink flowing. There are some inexpensive options out there for software that will schedule the print if you can't remember to do it.