Wifi printer erratic connection- imac to R3000

Question

I have a puzzle regarding wifi connection to my Epson R3000 which appears erratic. Printer seems connected.

Answer 1

Yes, that's an issue with Epson printers in general, not just R3000. I have Artisan 835s that do the same thing as well. The only solution that I found, which I'm sure you have as well, is to press PAUSE and RESUME in the printer status window. And sometimes the "communication error" status doesn't clear that way, in which case you have to go to the printer and disconnect the wifi, and re-connect to it. Then the driver will magically recognize that the printer is on the network.
I have posted the following in another thread about the same issue, so here it is, maybe it helps some:
Yes, 90% of the time I try to print something I get that error, and have been gettign that error for years, since the days of OS X Leopard. I have been pausing/resuming each printer to get it to start transferring files again, or, sometimes it won't work and I have to go through the wifi setup again, or unplug cat5 cable and plug it back in, or power cycle the printer if on USB.
I contacted Epson, and as you most likely know, they have no qualified personnel. They got me throuhg the obvious steps like removing the drivers, re-installing them (I actually did a find / -name "*epson*" and removed everything I found), rebooting the router (poor thing has nothing to do with it, it's working fine otherwise), swapping cat5 cables, usb cables.
I have 3 of these R3000 printers and they all exhibit the same issues. All of my other printers connected to the same computer/router/wifi do not exhibit this issue. I have Artisan 50 (usb), the 1400 (usb), and 3 Artisan 835s (wifi).
The things I hate most about  Epson and its printers are the following:
- they come with 0 support form Epson. If you know what find . -name is, you're already more qualified than any CS rep that's going to answer
- their drivers get updates very slowly for the OS X platform at least
- only some older printers will how you # printed pages/ # pages remaining. The R3000 for example shows "spooling job, 3% complete". Very informative.
- the printer driver for the R3000 creates some kind of proxy files that are HUGE in size, and it's done every time, for each page. It effectively takes 10 minutes to start printing 60 copies of 300DPI letter size photoshop designed files. The printer definitely doesn't have 5GB of RAM or temporary space to hold all that, so why not START FREAKING PRINTING while that stuff goes on in the background for subsequent pages? And if it's the same exact graphic, why doesn't the computer just simply send the first generated proxy file 60 times in a row rather than create 60 different proxy files?
- all Epson printers I've ever played with will stop printing mid page when it thinks it's out of ink. This determination is done in the chip of the cartridge in combination with the printer firmware, not by actual reading of the ink levels. I would much prefer that the printer would continue to print that page and stop after. Less wasted paper, and the cartridges I throw out ALWAYS have enough ink in them to finish printing one silly page.
- print quality doesn't change until you spend $500 or more on a printer (print heads are virtually the same type/size on all of Artisan printers for example), ignoring, of course, dye ink vs pigment ink
- did I mention no qualified customer service personnel and complete disinterest in taking any customer feedback into consideration?
In conclusion, I am very sorry to let you know that I have yet to find a solution to this, and Epson has been ignoring it for years. If you do bump into something worthwhile though, please post it here.
Thank you!