Is there any shimmer of hope about the excessive cleaning problem?

[The Hat]

Going on the above post #10, it sounds like all of your problems are directly related to your ARC chips.

They are enough to confuse most guys on the way they’re behaving and preforming, so it’s no wonder that your printer is getting jittery using them.

I would strongly recommend you dispose of these chips as quickly as possible, before they do damage to your print head, your printer is in fact doing a very good job keeping the print head primed by running the ink maintenance constantly for you..

 

[turbguy]

Turbguy, can you recommend a laser printer that will print in large format (A3+), print good color photos, start up quickly, and be cost-effective when printing, say, 1000 sheets per year?

I am certain that there are laser printers made that would print A3+ and larger. Perhaps this?

http://www.printerland.co.uk/Xerox-Phaser-7100N-P130305.aspx

Photo quality has improved greatly over the years, but photo quality still lags behind inkjet. They start quickly (5-10 seconds), print fast, and for text documents, laser prints, PER PAGE, have the lower operating cost that inkjets. In addition, the prints are truly waterproof and smudge-proof.

That said, the initial cost for a color laser printer for the paper sizes you need may be prohibitive.

 

[ludens]

Hi guys,

here's a follow-up on my issue:

I'm now leaving the printer on all the time. This pretty much solves the problem, even when using the autoreset chips! The basic behaviour now is that when I want to print something, it prints right away, after printing it fires the nozzles for a minute (slight tick-tick sound), then pumps off the droplets formed, then goes back to rest. That's fine.

It's interesting to note that with my old PC the printer starts a cleaning cycle every time I start the PC with the printer already on, but this does NOT happen with the new PC, despite the operating system, printer driver and installed software being the same on both PCs! Go figure.

When I replace an "empty" cart with autoreset chip by an identical, full one, it does NOT identify it as a new cart, so it does not run a cleaning/priming cycle! That's not a problem, since the switch of carts is very quick If it takes longer, and there is any suspicion that air might have been trapped, of course it's easy to manually start a cleaning cycle.

When I have a power cut, even a brief one, the next time I switch the printer on it will run a full cleaning/sucking/discarding ink cycle. Maybe I end up adding an UPS for the printer... A tiny one would do.

I cannot see why or how the alternative carts with autoreset chips could damage the head. The ink flow is fine, the chips don't have anything crazy in it that could kill the electronics of the head or printer, and that should be all that matters! Ink level indications are correct as long as one actually replaces each tank by a full one, as soon as it's reported empty.

So, I'm very much tempted to continue using these alternative carts, rather than refilled and reset original ones, simply because the alternative ones are easier to refill, having filling holes with rubber caps, and being made of clear see-through plastic. Also I have just one set of originals, and according to the maker of the alternative ones, the two types cannot be mixed.

By the way, the resetter I ordered still hasn't arrived. Economy shipping from China to my place tends to take two months, sometimes more...

Turbguy, thanks for that info about that laser printer. For the present, indeed it's too expensive, and it's far oversized for my use, in terms of the amount of pages one has to print per month to make it worthwhile. That, along with the lower photo quality, pretty much rules out a laser printer for me at present. But maybe this will change in the future.

So, a special thanks to those who hinted at leaving the printer always on! I have put a layer of black tape over the lighted power button, so the intense blue light doesn't disturb me.