I never thought about where the ink goes when the head gets cleaned. Makes sense I guess, I try not to use my printer unless I have to. The ink isn't that expensive but I try to follow that old wood working rule, measure twice and cut once. or in this case, proof read twice and print once.
They're called maintenance tanks. They are especially vital when you're switching between matte black and photo black on higher end printers which offer this feature. The lines need to be cleaned and that's where the extra ink in the lines go.
where are you buying your ink? i have never bought ink for my printer, i just buy a new printer - it's cheaper.
I have never bought ink either, I don't use printer at home. Anyway this is a good post, thanks for sharing.
Inkjet printers do cheat you of some ink, but it's neccesary to prevent clogging. The printers are programmed to flush a little ink through the tubes of the cartridge to prevent buildup which can mean clogged up pipes. Ever had half a page missing from a printer that has been left unused for a few months or so? That printer would have still been working fine if it had a chance to clean/flush out the cartridge once a week or so, so now you have to print a few pages and hope that flushes/cleans the tubes, if not, you can try manually cleaning the cartridge. The ony crime is the price of the cartridges, which should also come with replacement sponges! Oh and as for buying new printers instead of new cartridges, the new printers have very little ink in them!
That's awesome I think I have an inkjet in the loft, I might dig it out and check for tons of ink. I like how he obscured the brand so well, haha
The ink from head cleaning and overspray has to go somewhere, would you rather it dripped onto your desk? mvagusta, Epson printers actually come with FULL cartridges, but empty print heads.
He's absolutely right. That's why it seems like your ink levels take a dive after only printing a few photos. The situation is remedied once you put in a second set of cartridges, which will yeild better performance. On newer printers, the ink usage to clean the head has been minimized significantly. It used to be that on the Epson 4800's, you'd burn through almost a full cartridge of ink to switch between Photo Black and Matte Black inks. That's almost $150 worth of ink. On the newer generation, such as the 3800 (not a direct comparison, I should indicate), it uses around 40% of the ink that the 4800's used to. And that's in one generation.
Well I usually remedy stuff like head cleaning by simply using my printer to print twice a day - and sending everything that can wait to school
I knew it!!!!! It make seance now. I moved to laser jets. They don't do that. And work like a dream at any time you want them to work.
So this was supposed to be something "secret"? I guess people would complain more if they had to print all documents twice to get a good print. As for refill for print cartridges, it wouldn't be a good idea, TBH. The ink needs to be very clean. A speck of dust could easily ruin the nozzles of the cartridge. edit: oh, and if you want good prints, go for wax. Xerox Phaser, anyone?
The video really puts the point across - I knew they had waste ink resevoirs, but had no idea at the quantities of ink that could end up in them . . . shocking!
Speaking of ink, these days you get horrible promotions. Buy this pc and get a free printer... well, my brothers laptop came with a free printer, and it uses the smallest ink cartridges, and so every few months he needs to go buy new ink. My older printer isn't as good, and my ink is more expensive, but mine definitly last's a lot longer than his...
Thought this was common knowledge! I really noticed it when I got my external ink tank system on my epson printer, you can see the stuff being sucked through the tubes when you do a head clean, there is actually a bit of software you can download too that resets the hardware counter so you don't have to get the absorbent pad replaced by epson. I think when this epson goes down i'm going to go for one of the newer HPs that recycle the ink back into the cart on a head clean
A teaspoon of that stuff looks like it will satisfy my week's quota of fibre, iron and other minerals conducive to healthy living. Yum.
I detest inkjets... And this just reinforces my hatred of them. Ink has to the biggest waste of money/rip-off that exists. A 5ml cartridge here costs in the upwards of $15-16! Freaking 5ml?! I think me spitting on the ground has more volume then that! I made my folks buy a laser cause they were litterally buying ink every other month. Its been over a year now and they had to finally buy a new laser cartridge. They had to have printed over 7-8,000 sheets throuh that one cartridge. Well worth it, and fast too. HP 1020 if anyone cares.
