My MAXIFY 5350 is on refill ink

[Redbrickman]

I think it may be a case ot ROT13 with @The Hat - you just need a simple cardboard disc

Y'all gotta realise that "My eyeballs are a'floating" so I'm signing off here before I have an accident

 

[palombian]

Hello fellow refillers,

My Maxify 5350 is now at 15.000 sides printed and yesterday the Black and Cyan ARC's showed empty and I refilled the OEM cartridges. The 500 ml BK bottle is empty now so I used 100+500=600ml black and about 300ml of each color, that's 1500ml or 0.1ml/page. Also refilled the second CMY set since M and C levels are declining.
At maximum €100/l all expenses included € 0.01/page.
The printer takes a lot of time after replacing the cartridges and I had to do 2 additional cleaning cycle before the nozzle check was OK.
A test print showed displaced lines requiring a printhead alignment.
After that I printed 50-100 pages as @mikling suggests to equalise the pressures.
I also printed 2 full pages of cyan because this colour was the most difficult to get a clean nozzle pattern.
Today the first nozzle check was perfect.
This confirms that it is crucial to print a lot immediatily after refilling since you have no other way to get the internal pressures right.
My experience is that after that the printer is good for at least 1000p (I have the 2500XL cartridges).

 

[Artur5]

I’m far behind you for total pages printed ( 3700 total) but my experience is similar with Inktec ink. If I recall correctly, you use Octopus’ own brand ?.

The only ‘critical’ period is after refilling. Sometimes the first nozzle checks shows cross contamination of colors or a missing stripe. In my case, yellow is the color giving trouble more often and at least one cleaning cycle is needed after Mrs. Maxie has ended those lengthy routines when you reinstall the carts.

My MB5150 prints mostly text, so CMY carts are only at the first refill and I guess that it will take months before those three colors go empty.
Cost per page is lower than yours surely because black text needs less ink than pages with color diagrams or pictures. 1 ml of black ink gives me aprox. 25 pages of A5 text in standard quality.

 

[palombian]

With an OEM 2500XL refill at about € 70 for maximum 1500-2000p I had to buy at least 8 of them.
That's about € 400 or 200 a year less for ink.
But since I print more because it doesn't cost anything (but have to pay the paper) the real saving is maybe futile.
See this as a hobby .

PS: I forgot the color carts, as OEM they cost about the same as BK for a quarter of the volume.
See further on.

 

[The Hat]

See this as a hobby .

I am now down to two dye ink printers iP4500 and i9950, and I don’t know how long more the iP4500 is going to last, so I’ll have to get the i9950 out of moth balls to have it ready to take over.

The Maxify does a good job on photos but it still needs a coating of Glop over the print to make it pop, and I’d rather use one dye printer than to have to use two printers to get the same photo done.

I also have quite a bit of dye ink sitting on the shelf that I probably won’t use, there’s about 2 litres of various colours in about eight bottles, you never know when a printer is going to go toes up… But the Maxify is a real good printer and that’s the trouble, I’m not using the dye ink printer enough..

P.S. I got about 60 odd CLl-8 carts filled, empty and cleans ones too… but nothing compares to 3D printing..

 

[palombian]

All my dye printers are out of use now. The ink (most Suedhaus aka Prodinks) was so cheap it is no problem, and the black pigment is usable in the PRO-9500 and probably also in the Maxify.
After all the Canon dye ink printers (525-526 series) were a disappointment for me, but it helped my son for his degree in marketing he got in evening school (with great distinction).
He now has a colour laser paid by his boss, so I don't have to fill carts anymore.

As an inkjet office printer, the MX7600 and IX7000 had better print quality than the Maxify, but the latter is more reliable.

 

[Artur5]

Since I ditched my IP3000 months ago, for the first time in 30 years of using inkjets my home is void of dye ink machines.
I’m done with sponges (except in the bathroom )

 

[palombian]

Last week the BK was empty again and I started the official replace procedure (the printer places the empty cartridge in the right position behind the open slot).
Since 2 of the 3 colours were almost empty too I decided to remove all the carts and refill them altogether.
(I am thinking about removing the plastic part that covers the carts to avoid fidling with wheels etc)
After replacing the 4 carts the BK gave an error "cartridge not recognized".
Happily enough I still had an ARC in reserve so I removed the full cart (a mess since the ink gushes from of the open outlet) and replaced the chip.
As usual it takes a long priming action, and afterwards a few more cleaning cycles to have everything OK.
I also observe missing and/or waving straight vertical lines at the right border.
After a few printhead alignments this goes away (don't know why, but it seems to work).

It takes some time to refill the Maxify, but with the 2500XL carts I am good for 2 months again.

At this moment 12893 sheets with 4769 double sided = 17662 pages printed, most with color graphs or even A4 photos.
Ink used: 650ml BK and 300ml of each colour, that's 8 BK and 45 color cartridges.
At € 20 and € 18.50 each that would be nearly € 1000 over 2,5 years for OEM ink.

With the ink in the printer and a replace set the ink usage is not far from the Canon specifications.

I re-ordered 500ml BK and 3x250 C,M,Y at octopus-office.de (€ 91.41 incl shipping) - and this is not the cheapest ink - so after all there is a considerable economy and the printer and all refilling accessories are paid back since long.

Do not buy refillable cartridges, refill the OEM's, !
The necessary tools are limited to a set (better 2) of autoreset chips (about €10 for 4 chips at Aliexpress) and four 50ml syringes with a special tip to enter the bag (sold by octopus-office.de, but cheaper at octoinkjet.co.uk - same as for the PRO-1).
Do not forget to seal the outlet with aluminum tape (used for ventilation tubing).

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !

 

[Redbrickman]

Maybe your failed ARC chip was not a resettable? I bought carts with ARC chips from Octopus only to find out later that they were not true ARC chips.

 

[palombian]

Maybe your failed ARC chip was not a resettable? I bought carts with ARC chips from Octopus only to find out later that they were not true ARC chips.

No, it was resetted several times without problems.
Seems they can fail. Since changing a full cart spills ink everywhere (by design ) cleaning the contacts was no option.
I still have one-time chips I never used just in case.

Concerning the ARC's, I never reinserted a partially empty chip, so I don't know yet if such a chip will reset to full when reinserted, or that they need to be empty before.