The Epson R3000 refillable cartridge... exposed and explained.

[nertog]

Thank a lot !

So, for you, what would be the steps to follow to ensure that the cartridge is correctly filled? Especially regarding the damper reservoir?

Also (this may be a dumb question), does one need negative pressure in the cardridge when operating? Does that means that the air intake plug should be left there when the cartridge is in the printer? Or, as with other refillable cartridges, the air plug should only be present when the cartridge is out of the printer? (removed when the cartridge is in the printer?)

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but I'm a bit a newbie regarding refillable cartridges, and wouldn't want to damage my brand new r3000

Thanks!

Same questions here, especially regarding the priming procedure. Are these filled with the syringe vacuum method or would that damage the plastic foil?

 

[mikling]

Well to ship my cartridges and retain the seals on the cartridges I have a vacuum chamber powered by a lab grade Gast vacuum pump. The skins never see a dramatic pressure differential. It is totally safe and never stresses the skins.

If you want to prime manually, you can do so via the reverse fill through the outlet with a lot of ink in a gush to force it in. That intrinsically can be messy. So that is why I deliver them prefilled and preprimed and involves work and not just popping ink into the cartridge or selling them to customers and leaving the details in "their hands". This is really the only proper way to deliver them ready to use and the reason I don't generally like to deliver "empties" because it inevitably leads to service issues.

Negative pressure is required to operate and that is why the check valves are there. The initial prime and subsequent mini prime when the printer starts up will provide and maintain this.

The membrane is attached on by a hot seam to the skeleton of the shell. It is quite clear that too much pressure both negative and positive risks the strength of the seam or membrane or even the membrane itself. So any method that either directly pressurises the entire internals is not a good idea, Remember Pressure x exposed area can add up to a lot of force. You risk damaging the skin membrane if it too high...either negative or positive.

The air intake plug CANNOT be left on when in operation because this outlet to the outside is both the source of air that must reenter the cartridge when the ink exits and also is the exit if the safety upper check valve opens up due to positive pressure. The negative pressure derives from looking at where the air inlet enters the tank chamber which is at the bottom.

Syringe vacuums ...I don't like..... because the clear skin membranes and seams take the full brunt of the pressure. Think about it. Better off using a reverse fill adapter, you'll have one of these if you were with Epson printers since the sponge days.

 

[mikling]

The chips can be reset anytime to full by shorting the upper two little dots. The implications of this is excellent news. This ability will potentially extend the waste ink pad life by 7 to 8 times what Epson had intended. Also this will allow longer printing sessions without ink interruption issues.

 

[nertog]

his ability will potentially extend the waste ink pad life by 7 to 8 times what Epson had intended. Also this will allow longer printing sessions without ink interruption issues.

Can you explain this in detail please? I though every time a new cartridge was inserted all colours where flushed? This would mean that each reset of any cartridge purges all colours..or not?

 

[mikling]

The printer cannot selectively purge one color so it purges all channels that is connected to its pump and/or is contained within the sealing cup.
So if you are going to change one, all connected will be purged. So might as well avoid encountering an ink out condition on the others for the next cycles one at a time. With this method, you might never get an ink out message on many colors for the life of the printer.
Sit down and think about it for a while and it will be obvious why. You can't do this with OEM carts or else you'll be wasting lots of ink and funds. Refilling allows this strategy because a reset and top up on a partially empty cartridge wastes no ink at all.

For example a user employing this strategy on say a Pro9000 might never see an ink out condition on the green ink tank for the life of the printer because it is topped up and reset whenever one of the photo colors goes empty. If you didn't do this, when the green eventually runs out, you incur a purge on the other colors. But if the green never runs out it will never trigger a purge on the others.

 

[jtoolman]

Exactly Mikling!

With chips that you have to way till they read empty before they can be reset, you'd be constantly performing an ink change or sorts. With each change resulting in an "ALL Colors" Purge. Remember when you used only OEM carts? You pop in your 6 -8 -10 or whatever # or carts and begin happily printing, a few weeks later you have to replace, say the photo cyan. Now mind you, the other colors are at various states of level. Some still high and some mid and some about to go. So you pop in a new photo cyan and press the ink button to accept it. The printer dances and does its purge. That's about 5% gone on the photo cyan as well as your remaining other colors. Then whoah!!! you print a couple of prints and the photo magenta is empty. So you pop in a new photo magenta and,,,,,,,,Get the picture???
If money was no object and I could have simply popped a complete set of full carts and instead of running a cart change every few days after the 1st one went dry. By starting free and full after my 1st color went empty I would not have to do another change for another couple of weeks. So instead of 4-6 purges in few weeks, I'd be doing only one.
Resetting and topping of all carts Is really they only way to go.

On my PRO 9000 and 9500 MKIIs I swap ALLcarts except red and green which usually would not have even dropped yet for a 100% full and reset set of carts. Then I fill / top off the set I just removed and put it aside till it is needed next time. I now run Auto Reset Chips on both sets. No need to do anything. But fill or top off the idle set.
I switch sets when they are about 20% level never even reaching the low ink warning.
I always leave my printers on or standby. We hardly EVER get power outages. The chips will reset to full by interrupting power to them. Turn off printer, or remove cart from head. They will reset to full regardless of level.

The new R2000 and R3000 chips is what I've been waiting and wishing for, well,,,, for years!