epsons used but good?

[mrelmo]

ok the "good" canons that are easy to refill are getting more scarce every day, so can i get an opion on these 3 epsons that are used but might make good easy to refill printers the criteria is all in one, wireless and some what easy to refill and reset if need be i have found these locally on craigslist. the reason i am considering the epson is that they use a different printhead that i believe does not burnout like the canons but i maybe wrong

artisan 710 as is 60.00, as is. what am i looking out for that may say stay away from this machine

NX 515 40.00 appears to be in good shape

Workforce 615 80.00 says in good working order

as i have said before i am a canon person, who maybe switching to epson in the future but i know nothing of the epsons so any feed back or advise would be greatly appreciated

 

[qwertydude]

Don't get the NX. The NX is their bottom of the barrel consumer printer. It is painfully slow on color prints. Now depending on what you're using the printer for you might not want the Artisan. The reason why is it only uses dye ink so it's not as good for documents as it won't be waterproof and the 6 color ink may make for more hassle when refilling or outfitting with a CISS.

I'd go with the Epson Workforce 615 as it naturally uses pigment inks but is easy enough to just stick dye inks. There's only 4 colors to work with so refilling is easy and a CISS dye conversion gives me amazing color photo prints too and it prints quite fast. I've installed CISS systems on those Workforces at work and they're real champs. They just print and print. With only the occasional cleaning cycle necessary to clear clogs because they didn't get printed with for a few days.

Get these older ones now because the newer ones require fancy chips that require batteries to be mounted in the carriage to work properly.

 

[mrelmo]

thank you that is exactly the info i was looking for, a few more questions are there any issues with the printhead and what is the refilling procedure, also i have no interest in a ciss

 

[qwertydude]

If you get the refillable cartridges the refill procedure is dead easy. It's a good idea to get a set of needle bottles, one for each ink color as it'll make refills even easier.

http://www.amazon.com/Xuron-Bottle-010-Needle-XUR810/dp/B0006N73BA

The cartridges can be had on ebay. Just look for "Epson 68 refillable cartridges" All you do is pull the rubber plugs, fill with ink, replace the plugs and you're good to go. Generally you have to remove the cartridges from the printer to get them to reset, but you do that anyways when refilling so it might be a good idea to have a couple sets of cartridges so you can simply swap them out and fill them on your own time.

The best thing about the Epson is the print heads won't burn out even if you run them dry. Canon and HP you have to be very careful because if you run them dry or even get an air bubble in the printhead and try to print you risk burning out nozzles in the printhead. The Epson uses piezo nozzles so they don't burn out. This makes them an excellent choice for refilling since any problems I've ever faced with printing is solved by a couple of cleaning cycles and never had a nozzle burn out on me.

If you decide to get pigment inks though be sure to get a good quality pigment ink as lower quality ones can clog printheads and just make for a painful printing process needing excessive cleaning cycles. Dye inks I've never had a problem with even my cheap generic inks from AAADeal ink store on ebay. Very inexpensive and a near perfect color match for the Workforce inks and make for excellent and long lasting photo prints, especially after calibrating with Profile Prism, which I primarily use my printer for. I use the Epson Workforce 30 single function but it uses the same cartridges and a slightly smaller but otherwise similar printhead design of the Workforce 615.

One tip if you're going to convert your Workforce printer to print photos with dye ink is on glossy photo paper it won't use black ink, it makes composite black by mixing the color inks. This not only wastes tons of your color ink but you lose a lot of shadow depth and blacks look washed out. The solution I've found to get maximum color rendition and good blacks is to print photos is to use the "premium presentation matte paper" setting as this will allow you to print borderless and it uses black ink.

 

[fotofreek]

Squeeze bottles are the way to go. The ones on Amazon are a bit more pricey than the Howard Electronics bottles. Go to http://www.howardelectronics.com/jensen/index.html and check out the Jensen 2 oz bottles with luer lock cap - 10 for under $10. Don't get the ones with needles included for aobut $13 as they come with an 18 ga. needle that has too large a lumen and the ink drips out when you turn it upside down. Go to the "blunt needle" section and buy the 20 ga. 1 inch or 1 1/2 inch needles - unfortunately they come in packs of 50 for under $9. Even at that you will end up with 10 bottles with needles for close to the same cost as the ones at Amazon.

 

[mrelmo]

i presently use the squeeze bottles for the canons that i refill, it looks like i may venture into the epson field and i appreciate the advise