Switch off or standby between printing sessions?

[DaveReading]

I print maybe a couple of days a week (Pixma) and I've been in the habit of powering it down between sessions.

But I was interested to see a recommendation (not Canon-specific) in Fotospeed's "Art of Printing" ebook to "always leave your printer on in power save mode, as turning your printer on and off will use a large amount of ink".

I suspect there may be a sweet spot, in terms of printing frequency, where this might start to apply - does anyone have any views? Is there a downside (apart from presumably some nominal power usage) to leaving the printer in standby? Mine spends its downtime under a polyester fleece cover, which might have heating implications if left in standby, though I suspect not.

 

[pharmacist]

I suspect the firmware has some nifty algorithm for you to choose: you print alot, ok I am going to limit intermittent cleaning cycles. You print only sporadically, let's have some heavy and time consuming cleaning cycles to drain the cartridges and fill up the waste ink sponges. In the end the algorithm causes your cartridges to be drained after a certain time of usage or non-usage (use ink or spill ink). My Canon IP-7250 always has a hefty and time-consuming cleaning cycle when it not used after a few weeks of standstill, but fires up almost immediately when I print every day.

 

[The Hat]

in Fotospeed's "Art of Printing" ebook to "always leave your printer on in power save mode, as turning your printer on and off will use a large amount of ink".

Let’s deal with the hearsay first.. turning your print off does not waste ink in itself, so you can put that popular myth to bed where it belongs..

But unplugging your printer from its power socket will produce an extra longer cleaning cycle than normal, and it’s not a huge amount more, so the answer is to allow the printer to turn its self-off using the printer preferences auto Power setting.

P.S. Covering your printer when not in use is an excellent idea..

 

[Artur5]

As I said here a number of times, I keep my printers always off. My Pro-10s remains plugged to the mains socket, while my Maxify MB5150 is totally disconnected. I haven’t noticed extra ink consumption of the Maxify compared to the Pro-10s, rather on the contrary.
I guess that the behavior of different models, even within the Canon brand, can differ significantly, so what applies for Maxifys it doesn’t for Pixmas and vice-versa.

As a general rule, ink used for maintenance, is not triggered by on-off cycles but by the time elapsed between cleaning cycles.