Amount of ink = how many cartridges/refills?

[fotofreek]

After reading my post (six before this one) I should explain - I wasn't suggesting that the i560 is a lesser quality printer because of its being a few generations old in the Canon lineage. I was only pointing up the fact that if you purchased it when it was a fairly new model and have used it for two or three years it is difficult to guess what the remaining life of this printer might be. Since the latest printers use a different ink, a large volume purchase of ink might not be practical as a failure of the i560 would leave you with unusable ink for your next canon printer. If we knew that there was a two year supply of ip4000 or ip5000 printers still in the pipeline you would more reasonably consider purchasing a two year supply all at once for the volume discount. To cover my butt I bought two ip5000 printers when they were being closed out and put them on the shelf to extend my use of the bci-6 inks. In the ideal world you would buy the greatest quantity of ink to use in two years and your printer would be guaranteed to last at least that long, or you would be guaranteed that a replacement printer would still use the same inks.

 

[rainy]

Argh. Don't know how much ink to buy. Dreadful stuff, shipping and taxes. Messes up the math. I've asked for an invoice for the 12-8-8-8 set... $95CDN when all is said and done (ink/blanks/ship/tax) - but I'm still not sure. Looking for the balance between saving money, breaking even and sheer potential. Maybe I should go lower, and then if it costs me an extra $5-20 to restock, at least I'm not wasting money and ink? Damned 'sense', always ruining my plans.

fotofreek - thanks for the suggestions on kits etc., I haven't missed them, it's just that I have no frame of reference for my ink or printer use...

My i560 has gotten limited use (until now!), mostly printing notes for school in draft quality (I'm cheap! ha ha). But it has been doing that for two years now, so while it's likely got it's whole life ahead of it, who knows. My previous printer, a modest Canon BJC-325 or something, received similar use over 4-5 years and was still truckin' when I finally ran out of ink and put him in the basement. Suffice to say I really have no idea what I'm getting myself into with this high quality prints with bulk ink stuff.

In the end, I don't think I'll qualify as a "high volume" printer, so I'm crossing my fingers while staying pessimistic, because optimism only gets me in trouble.

And if it all goes to heck, I'll just have to find out where nifty-stuff lives and steal another i560 from him.

Good plan?

. . .

(P.S., if anyone thinks I'm crazy and don't need that much ink, please do say so.)

 

[Osage]

To rainy,

Given you have one printer, you might just get two hobbicolor medium refill kits--which would get you
a 8,4,4,4---2 complete cartridges sets and even an extra syringe.---remember that the ink only has a shelf life of two years. And 2 kits cost very little more to ship then one.

Then after you fill both BCI-3ebk cartridges------you have enough ink to refill nine more times if you run em until low ink------or figure 5500 text black pages at 5 % coverage with 8 oz of ink.---or 2750 per year.

On each of the colors-----your initial fill will take close to an ounce per color to fill your duplicate cartridges---leaving you 90 ml of ink in each color--- good for about an additional 11 refills for a total of 13 cartridges per color.

So two sets of the hobbicolor 4 color kits should give you the equivalent of

11----BCI--3ebk cartridges. or one kit equals 5.5
13----BCI-3Cyan cartridges or one kit equals 6.5
13----BCI-3 magenta cartridges "
13 ---BCI-3 yellow cartridges "

or in US dollars at a Canon list of $14 and $12.--------or what it would take $622 US to buy in the form of OEM cartridges----------In my case, I have two printers, one for me and one for my wife---so I bought a four color and a five color kit----got them both shipped to my door in one box for $50.00 even US.-----Canadian currency and Canadian shipping might add some costs but that might give you an
idea----from past use----what you could expect from ordering 2 hobbicolor four color kits.

Just realise you should use all your ink within 2 years.

 

[neal]

Osage:

Saving factor (original catridges verses refilled catridges).

Another factor to consider: In original canon ink BCI-6 catridges, there is about 14 ml of ink/catridge. Once it display "replace the catridge", about 3-4 ml of ink is till left inside which goes as a waste! However, if you refill catridges, you use most of ink as residual ink will be passed on nxet refill. Therefore, you saving factor will change from 45.06x to about 55x. BTW, Printers manufactureres make mony by selling ink and not just printers.

Neil

 

[fotofreek]

Rainy - at the risk of sounding 'fatherly', don't think this one to death. You will save lots of money no matter what you decide to do. Osage's advice is good. Even if you only buy one medium kit, the $20 US plus shipping to Canada will be less than the cost of three OEM carts. You come out ahead after the first fill of the empty carts! For the extra $20 US you will spend for purchasing two kits at once (plus negligable additional postage), If you only get two sets of refills before your printer gives up you are still futher ahead than if you had purchased OEM carts. A lesson I've learned is that, when buying, you don't always get the lowest price, and when selling you don't always get the highest price. If you worry through the process of squeezing out the last nickel from every transaction you will be forever stressed. Don't get high blood pressure over ink refilling or its costs. Just have fun with it and, at the same time, you'll enjoy using your printer much more freely.

 

[Osage]

Neil,

I agree with that residual ink factor---which is why my 45x had that already figured in---and I was using 10.5 ml as the amount of ink to refill.---and not the 14 ml.

You are also right about the cleaning cycles-----but I assume those would occur equally regardless if an OEM cartridge or a refilled cartridge is used-----in theory, a refiller gets all of its ink to the target area--which is the paper you are printing on---but in practice much ink---as I recall you said 20%---goes to cleaning cycles. Eventually filling the waste ink tank as your post noted.------if I can get even half of the page yield you got before I experience that problem, I will be thrilled.-----and if I can have the sucess you had cleaning the waste ink tank I will be double thrilled.----but also in theory---no cleaning cycles occur if the printer is used continously-----they just become required when the printer is shut down for some time and then turned back on. -----given my fairly infrequent printer use--I can probably expect far more than 20% ink wastage.

And your i950 also makes calculating things very difficult----Canon claimed cartridge yield exists for the BCI-3ebk at 5%coverage----and the i950 lacks that cratridge. And when you are printing color its widely dependent on the given file on which color inks will be used and in which proportion---and probaly fairly rare to have a file where the colors are used equally.

So my calculations were basically based on the cost of the ink assuming no ink wasteage. I noted that the hobbicolr price was $9.50 per eight ounce bottle-----and alotofthings.com seemed to quote a price
of $19.95 per 16 oz. bottle-----but if you buy all six color in 16 Oz. bottles---you find a quote there for $99.50----or $16.58 per 16 ounce bottle-----then you come back and state Joe will sometimes sell it a at $12. per 16 oz. bottle----which gets really cheap when you consider its $19.00 at hobbicolors to buy 2 eight ounce bottles.---but its not known to me if Hobbicolors would also cut prices in larger quanities.
But at $12.00 per 16 ounce bottle, that works out to be $96.00 a US gallon.----vs the hobbicolor price
of $152. when bought in eight ounce bottles at $9.50 per bottle.

Then the calculation for Canon ink when bought in the form of BCI-6 OEM cartridges is similarly easy.
Based on 10.5 ml of usable ink and 3783 ml in a gallon it would take 360.2857 BCI-6 cartridges to yield a gallon of printer usable ink-----times $12.00 Canon list is $4323.43 per US gallon.--hence my 45.036 savings factor. ----------which may be somewhat simplistic given you pay shipping, Canon OEM BCI-6 cartridges can be had for less than the full $12.00, sales tax, other consumables like cartridge blanks,
and other factors that could bias that 45.036 number by maybe 10% or so.

How that translate into actual page yield is another variable----but I am willing to accept your figure of
a 100 pages per ink ounce as indicative of how you print. Which may not apply to how I print or the other person prints--------but still works out to 12,800 pages per gallon-----or 3/4 cents per page ink consumable costs on average for you.------which times your 45.036 would translate out to 33.77 per page if done with oem BCI-6 Cartridges.-----minus the .75 cents per page it does cost you calculates out to a savings of $6605.40 over 20,000 pages------out of which you must factor in the cost of shipping, the cost of cartridge blanks, and other refilling supplies not including the ink.

Or at least thats how I am running those numbers-----but even a ball park $6600 figure does qualify as at least a bunch and probably a wad.

 

[neal]

Cost factor and type of prints:

Osage:

Well, I calculated cost factor in simple ways: If I use Staples or Kinkos, it would cost me about 40 cents/color page or about 80 cents/page if printed both sides. I do have a okidata 5400n printer which I only use for special prinitng- it costs about 25 cents/page. So ar, I have not filled dry ink powder ink in okidata 5400n - but overall cost also depends upon use of expensive rollers, timing belt etc.

In i950 printer, if I print both sides (8-12% area) my cost of ink per page would be about a cent. Only hassle is to refill catridges again and again. I recently ordered 36 catridges of 6X6 colors of bci-6 (only 99 cents each), and paid $8.40 towards shipping. I will use such catridges to refill again.... Bulk refilling is much easier, I work in a lab- and pretty good in technical aspects. I have 6 syringes (one for each coler) and attached to big needles. Therefore, I do not have to wash syringes after use... Overall cost per page is negligible as compared to lazer printing or outside printing- sitting at home- keep on changing catridges - while watching TV!

However, if you wish to print exact same thing in bulk quantity (like 10K plus quantities of brochers or newsletters) , I have found a very inexpensive way of printing - from printpelican.com.

BTW, 80# gloss paper printing on both sides would cost only 2 cents/page (including cost of paper with dark/any color prints) if you get web sheet pritinted by commercial printers. 50K prints (weiging 15K pounds) of 32 page brochure (8.5 X 11) will cost only $14K. They use large ink tanks and printing is done in few hours by multi-million dollars machines which otherwise ink jet priner or small printers would take centuries to print such large quantity.

Neil Chawla

 

[fotofreek]

Rainy - Osage and Neal have put a lot of effort and thought into detaiing the costs per vendor and various volume purchases. This is valuable information for someone doing an extremely large volume of printing and I commend them for their evaluation. I don't think that this information is directed specifically to your question of how large a volume of ink to purchase at this time.

All this information may be a bit confusing, however, for someone like you who is interested in starting to refill and does a moderate amount of printing. I'd suggest that you "crawl before you walk, and walk before you run!" Two Hobbicolor kits will do one heck of a lot of printing for the average home user with just one printer. On the other hand, if you are going to do industrial size print runs you would best have at least one backup printer that uses the same inks if you make a large volume purchase.

 

[rainy]

fotofreek and Osage -
Thanks for the simplified advice. Sometimes it's not so much the numbers that matter, and it's really helpful to have someone kindly remind me that I'm getting carried away : ) I'll think anything to death, but in this case I'm also spending my parents' money (poor university student) so I'm really trying to get the best value.

neal and Osage -
The technical stuff and real-life numbers are appreciated as well - though I tend to summarize and conclude that 10-12 8.5x11 photos/cart isn't very many and therefore I need buckets of ink, ha ha.


I thought (sorry) about a 4oz set for awhile today, but in the end I may stick with my 8oz set - the idea of printing anything and everything is just too appealing, and I've got solidly unjustified faith in my printer. Especially considering the volume of printing some people do, mine receives little to no abuse and short of being sonofab.tch should be able to get through that amount of ink. It's only had to deal with one set of OEM's so far, it can't be that tired.

It's only like four kits. Practically nothing.

Is it a sign when my invoice is set up for my old Paypal account and I can't get to it? (ha ha)