Leave it on or turn it off ?

[The Hat]

The only difference in the two colour sets on the 9500 are Matte black and Photo black

It uses the 9 colours with MK black and the same again but with PK black instead, depending on the different media selection.

The only time my Pro 1 really wasted ink was when I had disabled the ink monitoring so I tried leaving that printer on 24/7, and on or turned off didn’t make any difference to the cleaning routine.

The Pro 1 has a built in live memory, so whether it’s on or off makes no difference, it was like a Friggin Elephant it remembers everything.

The Pro 1 service manual doesn’t not include a section on purging or cleaning, because itself determines when to run a cleaning cycle according to its own maintenance records, saying that I never experience a single clog, and the moral of the story is, don’t disable the ink monitoring…

 

[mikling]

Looking at the chart. There are a couple things I observe.
There is a specified amount of dots that are printed before a cleaning is performed...regardless of whether it needs it or not. It does it.
The self cleaning counter is also based on the time interval since the last clean and not last print. This is important.
So if you use the printer regularly, it will go through a self clean just as a matter of routine. If you do not use the printer regularly then it will determine how much cleaning is required based on the duration since the LAST CLEAN.

So if you print something,,just a little thing regularly, will you waste more ink than just letting the printer rest for a longer duration and do nothing? Even if you exercise the printer, it will still perform a self clean at some time.

I'm a little tired to perform the what if scenario, maybe someone can read through the chart and then come up with scenarios that make sense. It isn't like the printer has a mind of its own, we just need to understand how it is thinking. I can see that the optimal time to print something is actually just under 10 days or 240 hours from the last CLEAN and not use. So if you want to be frugal on ink, you should mark the time a cleaning was done...not when it was used. We tend to keep track of when the printer was last used.

The other thing is that regular use does have a benefit. The ink equalizer mechanism stirs up the ink and the difference is actually noticeable. So the use of the OEM cartridge is seriously required for these printers if you want color consistency.

 

[mikling]

Bascially the tradeoff is this. Print a little something just under every 60 hours or else if you wait till 5-10 days you will endure a cleaning.
If you print that same little something in say over 60 hours, the printer will go into a clean routine. So beyond 60 hours and up to 10 days the same clean routine will kick in. When printing something regularly in under 60 hours, the printer will self clean based on the amount printed. A nozzle check uses very little ink.

So actually it might be better to simply run a nozzle check every couple of days and that actually will result in better color consistency as well as less ink wasteage. My way of thinking is that it is better to waste some ink on paper than having that ink thrown into the waste ink pad.

Someone please confirm and review what I have just stated. I could be wrong.

Gotta go run a nozzle check on my 9500 and Pro-10. Bye

 

[palombian]

...and a "healthy" prematurely saturated waste ink pad!
Sorry, had to do say it!
Joe

Never had one until now.
The maximum was 88% on the MX7600 before the printhead died after more than 20.000 pages, I discarded the printer.
I do not print that much, so there will even be a larger percentage of the ink flushed.

As @mikling showed, PRO9500 Mk I was a real ink gobbler, the Canon engineers probably were briefed to avoid a resemblance with clogging Epsons at any price .

The 9500 Mk II manual doesn't mention anymore how the flushing is done, but the ink consumption is very reasonable.
And the MX7600, with the same pigment ink, always has been more economic than the consumer dye models.

But if all Canon printers work more or less the same, it could make sense to leave them plugged in.

 

[mikling]

Just ran a nozzle check on my 9500 which was used yesterday. No cleaning.
My Pro-10 when it was last used did have a cart change BUT when the last use was? Sometime last week...when???
The tricky thing about this is that it is from the last cleaning to the next printing.

 

[palombian]

Bascially the tradeoff is this. Print a little something just under every 60 hours or else if you wait till 5-10 days you will endure a cleaning.
If you print that same little something in say over 60 hours, the printer will go into a clean routine. So beyond 60 hours and up to 10 days the same clean routine will kick in. When printing something regularly in under 60 hours, the printer will self clean based on the amount printed. A nozzle check uses very little ink.

So actually it might be better to simply run a nozzle check every couple of days and that actually will result in better color consistency as well as less ink wasteage. My way of thinking is that it is better to waste some ink on paper than having that ink thrown into the waste ink pad.

Someone please confirm and review what I have just stated. I could be wrong.

Gotta go run a nozzle check on my 9500 and Pro-10. Bye

For the 9500 Mk I this timing should make sense.
Once you forgot to print a nozzle check before 60 hours, you will consume 3.2 ml, about 235 ml a year.
It is cheaper then to wait until just before 480 hours then, you will loose 5,3 ml every 20 days, about 100 ml a year (you could even wait longer, but over a month seems risky to me).
That's one or two sets of carts a year for not using the printer.
In my experience it was at least that, 9500 Mk I's sell for € 50 since they are too expensive to keep (if you intend to print almost every day - or when you have an ink shop - a good buy, quality is the same as the Mk II).

Suppose a later model consumes half of that, it would make 1 set (10x14ml) a year in the worst case, about € 15-20 for pigment and a few € for dye ink.

Into the waste pads of coarse.
Does someone has an idea how much ink they can absorb ?

 

[The Hat]

It really doesn’t matter how much ink it sends to the waste pads, it is after all doing a good job looking after the print head and they cost way more than the ink.

Note:- If you intend fitting an external waste ink tank to any of the 9500’s, then the purge unit has two waste outlet pipes, so you might as well divert both into the waste tank, the second outlet discharges about 80% less, it doesn’t cost you any more..

 

[Ant]

I like to unplug my printer when I am finished printing as the mains supply is full of spikes\surges etc and I've read too many instances about canon power supplies being fragile.

 

[The Hat]

Your way of looking at things is, that the ink is the cheapest part of the equation, till the waste pads fill up that is and then it’s time for a new printer anyway, it’s a lose lose situation...

P.S. you could always use a surge protection unit..