Gloss Optimizer - Epson

[Ink stained Fingers]

I understand correct, you don't have to pull out and put back in the cart, just press the ink button again to continue?

Yes, that's the game, no physical handling of the cartridge, I'm doing the simulated cartridge change cycle via the status monitor on the computer, only when a cartridge is reported empty/not recognized another button shows up in the status monitor - 'How to...' 'Wie Sie' .. (den Patronenwechsel starten) - (this 2nd part of the text not visible), you click several times onto the button - moving the carriage to the exchange position - that's the best position for refill, into the cartridge still seated - you continue to click onto the button in the status monitor - some steps take a few seconds , and the printer goes into the normal position with a cleaning cycle. If not - you click through that cycle a 2nd time, and it should work. With the next print command you will first get a screen telling you that you are not using original Epson cartridges which you have to confirm, and the printing starts. I never tried this via the ink button on the printer itself so far.
Actually I didn't find that out accidentally , ARC chip cartrigdes for the R265 do the same, but not anymore on the R285, so since the R800 and R265 are about the same generation I was hoping for the same behaviour, and it got confirmed. The benefit is that the ink flow is not interrupted in any way by a refill, so I just can continue to print. And there is not need for a power off/on cycle to reset cartridges either. And even so, a power off/on cycle would be better for a reset since you wouldn't have to touch the cartridge either. This approach works and worked with various different types of ARC refill cartridges including those as part of a CISS so I just would assume the same for the R800 - just try it, nothing can go wrong. As you describe it - it's always a little bit of air getting into the pipe with every exchange cycle requiring a nozzle check and further cleaning . I have some other ink on order for more tests. Farbenwerk offers some 'Pigmera' ink for the R800 at this time as a HighGloss ink, but it's not a breakthrough ink yet.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I just tried it - it works as well via the ink button on the printer - once you get the low ink warning via the status monitor you move the carriage to the exchange position, do a refill in situ, and finish the action via the ink button again.

 

[martin0reg]

Thank you for trying out - I will try it with my R800 and also with my oldest model in my "printer museum", a stylus photo 950 (A4 with roll paper and automatic cutter), even more prone to suck air out of refill carts...

 

[jtoolman]

Guys, these carts with the on board ink button work best when simply refilling by pressing the reset button followed by the Printer's ink change button.
Of course this will only work when a cart is declared empty.
Earlier battery powered push button carts for the R2000 and others could reset all carts at will and not just when they reached empty. I have some.
When they are low, yountop them all off and press all the reset buttons! Done!
The newer non battery powers ones do not allow that.
They must reach empty first. The read can not be reset at will.
Here comes the ink purge domino effect!!!
Joe

 

[mikling]

I got a giggle because it seems what is old is new again!. This feature of a reset in situ was there perhaps in the first generation of ARC chips. On the next generation R260 it got even better actually. When one cartridge was declared empty and it self reset, it actually reset ALL the other colors as well, thereby eliminating the domino effect. ( Epson newer firmware disallowed this because it was an ideal setup for a CISS)

Getting back to the R800,1800, the issue with the self reset is that there is sufficient reserve ink left in the cartridge, that it allowed users to not bother to refill at the same time. Uh Huh. Until the cartridge emptied itself and needed to be reprimed again. Now let's not forget the old days when many Epson users did not understand the need for priming. I remembered when I first got into this refill thing and realized that nobody essentially understood how these refillable carts worked. The sellers would simply tell folks to perform multiple head cleanings to get the cart working. Thus I realized the best way to deliver a set of carts to the user was to preprime and prefill them. This was unique to Precision Colors at the time and we still do this for some of the smaller carts. I stopped this for the 38xx series because of thermal expansion and the volume of ink contained within. ( BTW, there are technical reason why you should avoid the non priming carts...for another day)

Again getting back to the R1800,,, in situ refilling at first seemed like the solution to not getting air into the printhead....right. Uh Huh.
Until you learn and this is something I have preached for over 8 years now, that the air entering the printhead is primarily from the bottom nozzles.
Repeat.....bottom nozzles. This was happening due to the breakdown of the ink meniscus at the tip of the nozzle. It also occurred while printing if the ejection of the droplet does not occur cleanly and air is actually entrapped in the ink as it is pulled back into the nozzle after detachment.

Today we finally see Epson doing things to "listen" to the nozzle chamber to determine when a small flush is required to push out the ink. Because there is nothing that can be done due to the semi random nature of the detachment process. This is done on their top end printheads. There is a research paper done in academia in Europe.

Here is why I sold off my three R1800s. I wasted more ink to regain a good nozzle check than what was used for printing. I did not print often enough.

The R1800/800/R2400 was arguably a printer with a printhead not really ready for primetime....the air issue. The next generation saw the inclusion of PTFE coating on the nozzle plate to try and minimize meniscus breakdown..( like oil or water in a PTFE coated frypan where the droplets stays together), high voltage mist capture systems to minimize buildup of the spray on the underside of the printhead....and higher density piezo material capable of stretching more thus allowing smaller nozzle chambers and less air entrapment and less ink wasteage.

You will find that most R800 arcs, can actually be reset with the same resetter used for the R260, 1400, R1900 etc. This will allow the elimination of the domino effect. The domino effect on this series of machines I found to be severe because the air entrapment builds up at a high level in the printhead. Thus when a cleaning clears a color channel,, another color is thus affected now. Also after this generation, Epson figured out that the volume of ink being taken out was done too quickly and this caused foaming. The next generation saw a much gentler but longer head cleaning action. The time taken to perform the action will fool users into think more ink was being extracted but the added time was because it was doing it slowly and waiting for the carts to recover after a slow pull.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm using that in place reset function on CISS systems with R265 printers since that printer came on the market - more than 10 years ago ? And it works very similar on the R800. It is consuming quite some ink on a R265 nevertheless - about one third of the total ink goes down the waste tube. The R285 as the successor, still with the same cartridge types did not have that functionality anymore, so modified CISS systems with a reset button came on the market, and the R285 driver was the first one offering the firmware update option, the R265 did not, and all the hazzles with rejected 3rd party cartridges came up, all other new printer models coming to market around this time had this 'feature' as well making life for non-OEM cartridge users more difficult. I'm not familiar with the R1800 in this respect. This makes printing with an L800, or L1800 with the Epson CISS so much more convenient, no cartridge, reset, domino etc problems - no ink cleaning waste - big tanks you just fill up again.
Pulling up a cartridge interrupts the ink flow, and may as well pull back some ink from the nozzles, it just requires additional cleaning and creates ink waste.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

There is a research paper done in academia in Europe.

there is a dissertation in German about the acoustics and fluid dynamics in tubes and at nozzles evaluating in detail the working of the piezo printhead of a Siemens PT80i printer - on the market since 1977

https://www.hs-heilbronn.de/2030831/dissertation-wolfgang-wehl.pdf

It's amazing how technology has progressed since then - many more nozzles, smaller drops etc but the physics remain the same. It was possible even at that time to identify individual misfired drops by piezo signals - something Epson is offering with their newest printheads in large format printers now.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

everything you never wanted to know about pigment inks with some links to their whitepapers and such
http://www.cabotcorp.com/solutions/applications/inkjet-technology
including some images of printing machines running 2000 A4/minute....but that's probably not our turf, and I still don't know how to get the best gloss on my prints.

 

[martin0reg]

...
( BTW, there are technical reason why you should avoid the non priming carts...for another day)
...
Today we finally see Epson doing things to "listen" to the nozzle chamber to determine when a small flush is required to push out the ink.
...

Here is a PDF which seems to cover the problem
http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/...rapment in piezo-driven inkjet printheads.pdf

Regarding carts to prime or not to prime, I have bought only the non priming type for the r800... until recently I finally found some of the priming type. I can't really say which makes more or less problems.
But the priming carts which I received are smaller (lower height, with almost the same content) and lighter: fully filled a OEM weighs almost 40g, a non priming cart with the same shape and height weighs about 35g - and a priming cart weighs only 30g.

Doesn't matter, you certainly think... me too... until I noticed that the carriage in its park position is not held firmly, you can lift it up some millimeter. And when the light priming carts are getting empty and even more light, then the weight is not heavy enough to hold the carriage down on the purging / parking pad. Probably resulting in a bad sealing of the nozzle plate...

I have put some weight into the carriage to prevent this.

BTW there are very few chinese sellers who have good instructions, especially for priming, if you get any description at all..

 

[The Hat]

Thank you for trying out - I will try it with my R800 and also with my oldest model in my "printer museum", a stylus photo 950 (A4 with roll paper and automatic cutter), even more prone to suck air out of refill carts...

@martin0reg, I once had a stylus photo 950 with roll paper and cutter, it was an ink guzzler and it died on me when a cartridges leaked into the print head electrics, it was the very last Epson I ever owned, thankfully...