Pixma Pro-100 Questions

[mikling]

If you want to come down to the last penny,
Here is the perfect way to go about this. Construct an extractor by putting a needle through a storage clip or cover.
Extract ALL the ink from every single cartridge. Suck out all the foam etc. Put into a bottle.
Using a set of such bottles, REFILL and use a resetter.

Take the tanks that are now empty and sell them to refillers who want an extra set of tanks.

Problem solved. You get value back from the empty tanks. You suck out ALL the ink that the printer would not access anyways. You avoid the round robbin.

So now you've got your answer....go forward and DO it! Shall we? Report back on your successes!

Using the above process you are now able to get 30,000 letter size prints before the waste ink pads fill up.
How many prints is that? My calculation is approx 29 feet of paper stacked. How's that for value?

 

[stratman]

REFILL and use a resetter

Except he said he did not want to refill. Problem remains.

Based on that, within the confines of the poster's scenario, what would be your method to using store bought cartridges to avoid the dilemma I experienced in Post #3, ie at what point do you replace a low but not empty cartridge in order to maximize ink usage of all cartridges in the certainty of new cartridge purges?

I know this does not help sell your Precision Colors ink, but you seem to be a person who could give a reasoned guess as well as or better than others. I doubt those that want to maximize savings and enjoy the process of refilling will not stop buying your ink in order to spend multiples more for OEM ink or aftermarket pre-filled cartridges.

 

[mikling]

Honestly, if you can afford to purchase OEM ink, I think you should do so for the benefit of others. The printer mfrs, need the revenue, printer prices are going up bigly. Darn, ordered a Pro-200 today. $800 CAD. I paid $199 and $34 for my two Pro-100s. A couple months or so ago I paid $1300 for a Pro-300. I paid $299 for my 8 year old Pro-10. Maybe, if Canon made more money, then I would have to pay less for my printers. Too much refilling causes headaches because the ones who should not be, try to and that can cause headaches as well.

Having said that, nothing can really be concluded and to do so would be fruitless. Why? because the degree of accuracy required to optimize requires that you know the amount of ink left in a tank after the low warning to within perhaps 0.2 or less ml after printing several prints. That is not going to happen unless you can truly estimate what color each image requires and it is nearly impossible. If you were printing identical batches over a repetitive cycle then calculations can be done. But that is not the case.

Heck the variation in the filled Canon tanks from the start can vary as much as 0.5ml to begin with!

All I can say is that printing in normal quality mode uses less of the photo colors than the standard strength ones and that will also vary by the paper type as well. The Canon engineers truly optimized the printing engine by each specific media type. So you'd have to try and reverse engineer the print engine by trial and observation! Theoretically you could save some but the effort to do so would be immense, and you'd have to waste a bunch just in trying to figure out how.

Just use the OEM ink to empty and enjoy the printing. Don't worry about it.

 

[stratman]

Pretty much agree.

Since replacing a cartridge triggers a "new cartridge" ink purge of more cartridges than the one being replaced, there is some theoretical timing for multiple cartridge replacements even if their ink levels have not been marked as Empty in order to avoid the "wasting" of other good ink in service of the replaced new cartridge.

At least three methods may employed, at least two not worth it.

1) Weigh the cartridges. One could perform calculations based on weights of cartridges to determine the theoretical optimum time to consider replacing a not yet marked as Empty cartridge WHILE replacing a different cartridge that has been marked as Empty. But you will need to weigh and change rather quickly as the printer will mark a period of time without all cartridges in the print head and then perform an obligatory new cartridge purge even if you reinsert the same cartridge even without resetting the chip.

2) There once was a a program/app that guesstimated ink usage based on the printer spooler or some such. It was used in lieu of ink level monitoring by the printer. If something like that were available then it could be used to determine the most economical time to replace a cartridge not yet marked Empty. I know of nothing like this nowadays.

3) Guess.

Frankly, there is no easy or precise way of determining when it would be economical to replace a prefilled store-bought cartridge not yet marked as Empty.

If this is a concern then refill.

If longevity (archival) properties are paramount, including selling prints, then stick with OEM. Otherwise, refilling is easy with your cartridge model (excluding physical limitations to perform the refill) and you will save a lot of money. Mikling (Precision Colors) has all the refilling kit you will need and his inks are good. No, they will will fade sooner than OEM inks on OEM paper, as do all third party inks, but then you can just print your self a new one.