borderless, sponge, pigment, questions...

[te36]

Some Epson printers do, some do not support borderless print. I was told that this is not purely a difference in the driver, but that printers supporting borderless print also have mechanical elements: some form of sponge? that would suck up the print that the head sprays outside of the paper. The example given was an L1800 (supporting that has such sponges, while the L1300 (not supporting borderless print) does not have such a sponge.

I do not have either printer, but if such a mechanical help was necessary to make borderless print work, i should be able to find it also on the XP series printers that all support borderless print. Yet, i can not find anything in the printing area that looks like support for borderless print.

Any idea ?

The background of this question of course is that i wonder about the most easy to use printer for photos. I do not believe that CISS printers are necessarily easier, instead, CISS is an additional wear&tear element. But: vendors make cartridges sufficiently obfuscated for refillers that CISS looks like the easier option. Therefore an L1300 looks like an interesting model - if i could make it print borderless. Which i think should not be a problem with a linux driver. Except that i don't want to mess up the printer because it's missing some physcial elements for borderless print. So i am trying to understand why my XP series printer isn't messing up..

Btw: I did not see sufficient quality improvements on 6-color XP-960 vs. 4 color P-900, so i do not see a benefit in dealing with 8 colors on L1800 vs. 4 colors on L1300. Black&White prints would be uncommon for me.

It also seems as if the L1300 is sold under the name ET1400 in germany, or is there any difference between these two models ?

Lastly: Given all the discussion about fading of dye ink (and even lyson inks shown not to be long lived), the idea would then be to use some good photo pigment ink. The heads on the L1300/ET1400 is only supporting droplets as small as 3pl (not 1.5 pl as in XP), so the hope would be that these heads should behave well with pigment ink. Does this make sense ? After all, there is no A3 pigment CISS printer, so if not ET1400/L1300, what else ? ET-16500 is not available in Europe at all it seems...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The L1300 is based hardwarewise on the B1100, not available anymore, the B1100 was running with Durabrite pigment inks and did borderless, the L1300 does not. The ET14000 has a 2nd gen. tank system which you don't move anymore for fill up, if you want to know more about the actual printing hardware to may get a service manual or look up the drawings and spare parts listings at gedat-ersatzteile. I have shown elsewhere here that the 1.5 vs. 3 pl in different printers don't make a visible difference - in a direct comparison between a WF-2010W and a L800/R265

 

[te36]

Thanks. Yes, i was thinking of your WF-21010W article. So pigment ink should be feasible in both models and ET14000 might be a better CISS being 2nd gen.

Are there any tricks to keep such a printer with pigment ink alive when not printing for longer time (months) ?

 

[The Hat]

Are there any tricks to keep such a printer with pigment ink alive when not printing for longer time (months) ?

There are no such animals, ALL printers whether pigment or dye can’t sustain long periods of idleness without it causing some serious issues, the printer will do one of two things, either clog up to hell and/or use a substantial amount of ink to return to clog free printing later, if you’re lucky...

Your printer will suffer badly and it shortens its life greatly, the owner also suffers financially, you must print regularly or sell the printer, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Everyone knows it costs to own and run a printer, but it costs a darn sight more to leave it idle, you can save a few cents or two by not using it, but as soon as you try to print a single sheet, just watch those dollars flow out the darn window...

Epson printers tend to clog up regularly, Canon printer don’t, and there are good reasons for that, it’s all a matter of choice, (Costs) its case of swings and roundabouts and you must choose one or the other, if you wish to print at home...

 

[te36]

Maybe wrong forum now, but i have an unopened Pro 100 which has a removable head. Could i not potentially make that one survive longer without printing by removing cartridges and wrapping the print head into some airtight packaging, dry or wet (eg: windex clear) ?

My old HP Photosmart c7180 has also been running for almost a decade now with ultimately very low pagecount but perfect print picture. Maybe 1500 pages, often no printing for 3 months at a time. Always left running, maybe it is cleaning in the background, but never full wastetanks or the like. Aka: i claim that reliable long term low-utilization printers did exist. But of course it may be true that all newer printers have become more crappy.

So, lets say i leave the new printer powered on all the time without using it. Does that (like on my old c7180) help avoid clogging because of the self-clean routine ? I remember a video from jtoolman saying that there is quite a bit of self-cleaning on the pro 100, so it would be a better use of ink to print regularily. But in reverse, it should also be fine to leave it unused on for a long time, just the waste pad and my ink budget will suffer. How about the same approach with epson printers ?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

L1300/ET14000 - there is no relevant difference between those two beyond the CISS bottle arrangement,
the spare parts drawings are the same
https://www.gedat-spareparts.com/ex/l1300.pdf

If you look to the drawings of the B1100 https://www.gedat-spareparts.com/ex/b1100.pdf on sheet #5 you'll find at the middle upper part an item #538 - porous pad - which you don't on the L1300 drawings
It's something like this

This is from within a WF-2010W, and you won't find this sponge stripe in a L300....

A Brother printer does unattended cleanings in a 2 weeks frequence unattended as long as it is on power. My Epson printers don't do that but there may be some which do - I don't know.
I'm using refill cartridges filled with some cleaner or similar , insert them into the printer, do a nozzle purge or two and put them aside, there are various liquids available here
https://www.octopus-office.de/shop/en/printer-ink/nozzle-cleaner-cartridge-cleaner/?p=1
https://www.octopus-office.de/shop/...cial-storage-and-preservation-solution?c=1295

 

[te36]

Thanks a lot, ISF

Wrt to the borderless print sponge: I think i understand what part it is in my XP printers, but it does not look as if there is any drainage for it. Is there any drainage on the WF-2010W or is the overprint just meant to dry away ?

I also wonder if the plastic humps are something that you also do not see on the L1300. There are a lot of these humps in he XP-series and i am wondering if they are not some form of print-head guidances that could also explain why borderless print may only be support for specific sizes. If not that, then what the heck are they good for.

Cleaner filled cartridges are a cool idea. I wonder if i could even dump some clear into the waste ink absorber opening, wait a while and try to suck up waste ink with a syringe... Might be an easier way than changing waste pads. But haven't tried to figure out if geometrically i could get to the waste ink through the sponge.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

that porous pad is below nozzle plate level, and underneath paper in the print path, those ribs only hold this pad. The overspray is minimal and the amount of ink from it, and it depends on the model whether and how much there is additional storage for that waste ink. Just to look to the drawings of the WF-2010W
https://www.gedat-spareparts.com/ex/wf_2010.pdf on sheet 4 you see the waste ink container #703 at the right , a box which goes into the back of the unit and can be released with one screw. Item #514 on the left is the paper guide front - PGF - with the foam pad on top, and an additional porous pad #519 underneath, and these constructional details are different between different printer models.

 

[te36]

So..

The ribs are only there to hold the pad but not to help the printhead in any other way with overprinting.

The pads do only suck up the overprint ink and that ink will then dry inside those pads - but not getting drained into the waste ink.

Yada yada yada:

If i where to use a printer like the L1300/ET1400 with a driver that allows me to tune the printing size so i can get borderless printing, it seems the only thing that would happen is that the little bit over overspray ink would end up on some unpadded piece of plastic or metal underneath the printhead... an dry up there. may not look as nice, but should be functionally not any worse.

And i'd expect to clean up an epson printer regularily anyhow given how wasteful it seems to be with ink...

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

if --if ---if if the borderless print option is programmed to off into the firmware of the printer itself no other driver would be able to make use of it.
The ET14000/L1300 are actually the same units when I compare not just the assembly drawings but look to the markteting images on the Epson web pages, I was wrong to assume that the ink reservoir assembly is like those on the ET2500 etc 2nd gen. models. Anyway - printing onto A3+ and cutting to A3 would yield borderless prints as well. Epson just does not want you to print borderless on this model, you rather should buy the L1800 instead...