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It serves 2 main purposes. One is to remove dust particles that might clog the 0.4mm hole in the nozzle. The other is that some people like to add a spot of oil so that the filament gets lubricated as it passes through. I used to do this as it prevented extruder mis-steps with my longish Bowden...

OpenSCAD is particularly good if you have some experience in programming, and suits my needs well. I pointed @The Hat in that direction and he has taken to it like a duck to water! Tinkercad is a good alternative. You might also want to look at Freecad, which is a bit more comprehensive but less...

Hinges are quite possible and can be printed ready assembled ("print in place") , eg https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:154908

You now have the means to make a robot lawn mower!

I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news: 3D print heads can and do get clogged (dust, burnt plastic, etc). Partial clogs cause poor prints, total clogs cause filament jamming. The good news: they are much easier and cheaper to fix than an inkjet printhead. And if you can't...

@The Hat I built my own 3D printer about a year ago and it's been an all-consuming (and time consuming) hobby ever since. I'm sure you will have great fun with your new printer, which looks like a good one. Any cheap card read should be fine, eg from Poundland (or Irish equivalent). You can...

Thanks very much for your help. It doesn't seem easy to get under the cover over the purge unit. I would normally be happy to have a go at dismantling the printer, but since it still has a few months left on its 2-year retailer's guarantee I think I'd better take it back to the store for repair.

Oh dear.... my iP8750 has suddenly stopped working. A little while after a successful A4 photo print I noticed that the two lights (power and amber) were flashing on and off in an alternating pattern. The printer reports a 6A80 error. Turning it off and on doesn't help. Some googling indicates...

True, and this is not just restricted to printers. The Colormunk Photo, for example, has propriety software for profiling printers and monitors - full, I'm sure, of trade secrets - but the open-source Argyllcms arguably produces better results, though is less easy to use. There are a lot of...

There exist open source drivers (foomatic and gutenprint) for a large number of printer models, though not yet for the Pro-100 AFAIK. The output from propriety drivers has presumably been reversed engineered to produce them, so such things are possible in principle. If all you want to do is...

Thanks @The Hat - I will follow your advice as always! Do you find that the ink counters on these carts are accurate enough to run until 'empty'?

I'm thinking about getting a spare set of refillables and have been looking at these Canon 551 refillable carts from Aliexpress, trying to understand the refill instructions. The listing is from the manufacturer (Aomya), so I assume they know what they're talking about. Quote: "Adopts No-sponge...

My Pixma iP8750 takes PG-551 cartridges and is a rear-feed A3+ printer. Perhaps that is the only exception in the 551 generation?

Before you completely give up on the printer it might be worth having one more go. I had a similar, though less severe, problem that didn't resolve fully on first soaking. It took a second attempt to get results. If you have a significant amount of dried ink in the blocked nozzles it may take...

I needed to generate some test patches for 4x6 paper (Kodak Advanced, which I found in my local Tesco reduced from £6 to £1.50) and, after some tinkering, came up with the following incantations, which I'm posting here in case they are of use to anyone. Based on CAP480, but optimised for 4x6...

That's a useful link I hadn't seen before. I had heard that it's good to keep the sponge side full, but based on the above I guess it's not so important. Thanks again for all your advice.

Thanks for your informative reply. Incidentally, I think you might be referring to older-style ARC chips that reset when removed for refilling. The problem with my ARC chips (which I believe are now the most common types) is that they reset only when the cartridge (including sponge) is nearly...

Quick question, if I may. I like to visually check the ink levels in my refillable carts on a regular basis so that I can refill them when the non-sponge side runs low (the good people on this forum, as well as my own experience, have taught me not to trust the ARC chips). If I open the cover...

@PeterBJ Thanks for clarifying that. I have an old HP all-in-one that suffered total colour loss. I assumed it was a purge unit issue but I never did managed to fix it. @mikling Thanks. I did try that but had trouble getting the paper clip far enough along without it bending. I think the 551...

Good news - I got my magenta back! I did two things, so I'm not sure which did the trick: I had a go at manipulated a second refillable as per instructions, but I also cleaned around the gasket with a cotton bud to ensure a good seal. Despite the good nozzle check I will continue with caution...