Dirty little secret of inkjet printers.

[john schroeder]

After watching this video I checked an old Epson C86 I had put out in the garage

after it died. It was full of ink. I mean it was really FULL of ink. There

was enough black ink in the bottom of my printer to fill at least 20 ink

cassettes. I think the next printer I buy for my office will be a dot matrix.

 

http://www.atomicshrimp.com/st/content/inkjet_printer

[frans_waterlander]

The dirty little secret is that inkjet printers are designed to print text and images with the best possible quality and the greatest possible speed. In order to maintain print quality the nozzles need to be kept clean and unobstructed. The way to do that is to spit ink through the nozzles at certain times. This is not done to increase ink usage as the language on this website seems to suggest. If you don't like this situation, go ahead and start designing your own printer and see if you can do it more economically. There are many thousands of highly skilled engineers at work to develop these printers and I just challenge you to do a better job. And yes, I have a dog in this fight as I worked for many years at one of the design centers of a BIG inkjet company.

[gdw]

Ink jet printers are designed to make a mint on ink cartridges. Why else does every upgrade come with cartridges of smaller capacity and greater cost?

[jim_francis]

I love my R2400, but it's hard to make that case that inkjets are designed to economize on ink. The business model is based on profiting on ink. The natural competition between companies should limit scandalous ink wasting, however.

[sal b]

I've thought about going back to a dot-matrix printer, but I can't find any that will connect to current computers. I think they're things of the past.

 

Sal B.

[roger_smith4]

Thanks John, that's an amusing video.

 

One note- if your printer gives you the message that the fellow in the video got DO NOT junk your printer. I reset my Epson R220 with the SSC utility a year ago and it's still going happily. Frans- it's not criminal that the printer wastes ink. It's criminal that Epson wastes the entire printer by making the service life of the pads so short (I got the warning message about "parts reaching the end of their useful service life" after a year of very light use), charging too much to fix, and not making it simple for customers to change the pads themselves. User replacable pads accessable through a trap in the bottom would be trivial to engineer.

 

Fortunately there are capable engineers working on this problem and I am going to install an external waste ink tank (Ebay) to deal with waste ink for me: see here for basic instructions: http://www.efillink.com/HowToWasteInkDrainR200.html

[sal b]

OK, with a little research, I found this:<p>

 

<a href="http://www.emtcompany.com/products/adapters/dxubpc-parallel-to-usb-printer-adapter.htm"> http://www.emtcompany.com/products/adapters/dxubpc-parallel-to-usb-printer-adapter.htm </a><p>

 

So, maybe you can use a dot-matrix printer!<p>

 

Sal B.

[JeffOwen]

I have a Canon i9950 inkjet that uses 8 colour tanks that seem to run out regularly. What happens is that I use the printer one day then a couple of days later I switch it on and it immediately does a self clean and as soon as I try and use it it says one of the tanks is empty. I change it and it immediately does another clean before doing the printing. It all sounds logical but knowing that soon my sump will be filled up with all this expensive cleaning waste I am concerned that it will soon stop me all together.

 

Is there a way I can 1) stop all this cleaning or at least limit it to one colour only, and 2) empty the sump myself without destroying the printer?

[vrankin]

I'll return to my question after a sentence or two of background. I began doing

serious home inkjet printing in 1999, moving literally hundreds of dollars of ink

through (often clogged) inkjet heads, and replacing three Epson printers that simply

wore out. In 2006 my wife began keeping a record of my ink and paper costs and

finally presented me with a statement. It was like an addict being told of his

problem by a family member. Her question was basically the same as my question

above. "How important to you is seeing a print in your hand instantly?" The answer

for me in the last two years has been working primarily on the monitor and printing

only those files that will be exhibited. I find the work of Mpix every bit as faithful to

my photographic vision as my own, and actually less expensive for my volume. A

local commercial printer puts my one-hour 4 X 6 prints on real photo paper, and

makes excellent quality prints. Bottom line: much less expense, lighter

environmental footprint, excellent quality.

[jerryrock]

The "dirty little secret" is that the printer manufacturers make money on the ink

cartridges, not the printers in the consumer grades.

 

Historically Epson printers have had head clogging problems. The newer models like

the Epson 1900 are designed with teflon to minimize the clogging. Canon printers

are less prone to head clogging.

 

If you do a lot of printing it is cost effective to go with the larger professional grade

models that have much larger ink cartridges, lowering your price per print cost

substantially. Printers such as the Epson 3800 and Canon 5100 present a larger up

front investment but in the long run lower printing costs.

[kuryan_thomas]

The Epson 3800 and other pro Epsons also have replaceable waste ink tanks. I

recently replaced mine - $20 from B&H. That was after 16 months of use. I consider

that a reasonable cost.

 

Not directly related to the post, but I'm always bemused when I read, "Epson ink

costs more than champagne." Oookkkaaaayyyy...so what? I don't drink champagne,

so 10c a gallon is too much for me. I use Epson inks all the time, and the prices

seem reasonable. I don't get this champagne comparison at all. To me, the amazing

thing is that champagne costs what it does, not that Epson inks cost what they do.

[colin_mattson1]

So overspray from full-bleed prints and ink from head cleanings obeys the laws of

physics and doesn't blink out of existence?

 

Whoa. That just, like, totally blew my mind.

[roger_smith4]

"The Epson 3800 and other pro Epsons also have replaceable waste ink tanks. I recently replaced mine - $20 from B&H. That was after 16 months of use. I consider that a reasonable cost."

 

I agree $20 is totally reasonable. It's totally unreasonable that their lesser printers are designed as disposable when the print heads, transport, rollers and other equipment are actually quite durable and similar to higher quality Epsons. Why do they encourage people to turn a perfectly good printer into E-Waste? Hopefully new producer take back recycling laws start to change that mentality.

 

"In 2006 my wife began keeping a record of my ink and paper costs and finally presented me with a statement. It was like an addict being told of his problem by a family member. Her question was basically the same as my question above. "How important to you is seeing a print in your hand instantly?"

 

For me it's not about instant feedback. Even with decent profiles (I have a calibrated monitor and custom printer profiles) there are reasons to make a test print and then realize something's not quite right and tweak and reprint. Waiting days for the print to arrive in the mail isn't conducive to this.

 

Also for B&W in particular the paper choice available at most commercial printers is quite limited. I have little interest in Fuji Crystal Archive after making prints on Harman FB Al and Innova Smooth Cotton matte papers.

I'll still send out 4x6 to winkflash.com but the prints I really want to spend time on get done at home on my R220 (and hopefully soon R1800).

[digitaldog]

The so called "dirty little secret" isn't really a secret. First of all, as pointed out, its

by design and necessary. Users have been moaning about this for years. Get over

it. You pay an unbelievably low price for the printers to begin with; the companies

make almost no money on that. Take it from someone that spent $10.000 in 1990

on a USED dye sub printer (who's 8x10 max prints cost nearly $3.50 a pop in those

dollars). We have nothing to complain about. Oh, the dye subs left a tad of the dye

material, my Pictrography didn't use every mm of material and its not really possible

(or a good idea) to drive your car with the aim of draining the tank. There are all

kinds of products that don't guarantee 100 usage of their expendables.

 

Do the ink jet manufacturers make up their profit on the printers by selling ink? Of

course they do. And they deserve to. Isn't it nice that some provide really good

output profiles for free so you waste as little media as possible and some, spend

huge amounts of money educating their users about getting the best possible print

qualities with the fewest number of prints (proper soft proofing, Photoshop

techniques etc).

 

So its not dirty and its really no secret.

[ronald_moravec1]

I will let you in on the real secret. Dye sub printing. Turn it off. Turn it on after

months and months and it works.

 

Prints look as good as prolab real photo paper stuff and way better than consumer

grade inkjets.

 

The other secret is ink has a shelf life, 6 months. Use it or loose it. When it costs

hundreds of dollars to reink and you made but a few prints, that is a waste.

 

Unless you do the necessary volume, turn it over to your local lab, make that pro

lab, or send it to MPIX or lab of your choice.

[digitaldog]

Dye sub, oh yes, one, maybe two surfaces. About as non archival as one can expect (Pigmented inks make

even conventual silver prints seem pretty non archival). Far lower color gamut. Dye sub is dead (seriously

dying) technology!

 

MPIX? That's fine for amateur or prosumer work, maybe huge wedding orders but for anyone that strives for

the ultimate in fine art prints, needs control, options over papers, longevity and stability, full color

management workflow, that's not going to cut it.

 

What's a consumer grade inkjet? An R1900? A 3800? Easy to dismiss when not defined.

[graham john miles]

Personally, I would buy a dye sublimation for the small prints. Get my big prints done custom, and buy an HP printer for text and general printing. At least when you replace an HP cartridge you are replacing the print heads too, so theoretically it should go a lot longer than the Canon or Epson.

[gdw]

To the fellow up there that is dreaming of an R1800, give me a call. I have one that is hardly used that is taking up a lot of desk space. As far as I am concerned it would make a good fishing anchor except it would pollute the pond. Two things that I have loved in the past that I will never purchase again are a Dell Computer and an Epson Printer.

 

And the fellow that don't drink champagne, send it south; since I have the Epson I can no longer afford champagne.

[john schroeder]

Yes I could design a better printer and so could those thousands of highly skilled engineers. In the end it would be too expensive and I would go bankrupt. Many everyday items can be designed better but not more economically. I don't think it would be all that hard to design economical printers with user replaceable waste ink collection pads. It could be very messy but so can refilling ink cassettes and people do that all the time.

[jtk]

Refilling carts and use of CIS have been the primary cause of Epson clogs. All you have to do to confirm that is to browse the various Epson and primarily-

Epson Yahoo groups.

 

In 13" models, Canon generally comes out #3 in shootouts Vs Epson and HP . The top 13" printers are typically 2400 and 9180. If my superb 2200 died now I'd have to make that choice...HP is far more ink-economical and the print heads are cheap/easy to replace, but 2400 is better with gloss/semigloss paper (eg "fiber/fibre/baryta" papers.