What wastes ink?

[Lee Beck]

I'm on my 4th or 5th inkjet printer during my 20 years or so of home printing. I'm sure that I've spent over $1000 on ink. My current model is an Epson XP 610. I've heard that cleaning the heads (jets?) wastes ink but is needed to keep the printer heads from clogging. Also that the printer may automatically pump ink through the system when a cartridge is replaced as normal maintenance.

The thing makes several noises on startup and after a printer cartridge is installed. Is part of this pumping ink through the jets to keep them clean? My reason for asking is that my current machine has 5 cartridges. Right now it is low on one. I'm reluctant to change it until the printer stops working thinking that it may pump ink through all the jets and waste ink. Or maybe I should change adjacent cartridges that are almost empty. Maybe changing more than the empty cartridge is the way to go.

So what's the recommendation that is best for conserving ink and maintaining the printer?

Thanks

 

[turbguy]

Upon replacing a cart, the printer does go through a "priming" cycle to assure that if any air has been introduced into the ink passageways, it is removed. Air in a piezo print head (Epson's design) will interupt printing for that color.

If your printer has one "parking pad", then ink will be drawn from all colors by a vacuum pump (and perhaps firing of the nozzles). This waste cannot be user controlled, but the COST can, by using less expensive inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

and there are more causes for cleaning cycles consuming ink - if you disconnect a printer from power and turn it on again e few days later it will go through a start up cycle doing some internal tests, checking the print head position, turning some internal wheels and gear and running as well a cleaning cycle. And there are the user initiated cleaning cycles. This directly shows the benefit of the ET-Ecotank or L series printer models with an integrated tank system, they don't need a cleaning cycle after a cartridge change, and keeping them in standby on power will cancel most of the startup cycles as well. Since this directly impacts the ink sale not all of these models are available in all sales regions - you are supposed to pay for the ink including the waste ink......

 

[The Hat]

So what's the recommendation that is best for conserving ink and maintaining the printer?

The best way to save ink is to change any cartridge that is becoming low on ink at the same time as the empty one.
See these links:-
..http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/canon-pixma-pro-10-refilling.8479/page-11#post-88084
http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/refill-the-lot-instead-of-running-a-cleaning-cycle.10575/

 

[Lee Beck]

okay. My usual approach is to continue printing until the cartridge is empty and the printer refuses to print or the printed page starts showing blank lines or incomplete colors. My experience is that the real "end" occurs long after the first "ink low" warnings. My assumption is that of course the manufacturer wants you to buy as much ink as possible. I just replaced my cyan cartridge. Should I also have replaced Photo Black? My experience is that I have probably another 50 pages or so before the black is really empty.

 

[The Hat]

I would have changed the yellow, magenta and black at the same time as the cyan, but that would all depend on whether your refilling your own cartridges or not and can reuse the remain ink left in the removed cartridges..

 

[Lee Beck]

WOW! I was only looking at the photo black. So you're saying that even though the yellow is only half empty that the purging function will waste more than half the ink left???

I'm looking forward to learning how to refill and reuse ink. Lead me to the best way to do this.

 

[The Hat]

Here is another alternative for to contemplate.

You could switch to the ECO version which comes with CISS built in and no cartridges to changes at all which cuts out a lot of waste ink, and no refilling needed, expensive it may be but it comes with a two year warrantee and nearly 2 years supply of ink ..

 

[Larryb]

I'm on my 4th or 5th inkjet printer during my 20 years or so of home printing. I'm sure that I've spent over $1000 on ink. My current model is an Epson XP 610. I've heard that cleaning the heads (jets?) wastes ink but is needed to keep the printer heads from clogging. Also that the printer may automatically pump ink through the system when a cartridge is replaced as normal maintenance.

The thing makes several noises on startup and after a printer cartridge is installed. Is part of this pumping ink through the jets to keep them clean? My reason for asking is that my current machine has 5 cartridges. Right now it is low on one. I'm reluctant to change it until the printer stops working thinking that it may pump ink through all the jets and waste ink. Or maybe I should change adjacent cartridges that are almost empty. Maybe changing more than the empty cartridge is the way to go.

So what's the recommendation that is best for conserving ink and maintaining the printer?

Thanks

I've found that printhead cleaning doesn't use nearly as much ink as people claim. I probably waste more ink in prints I toss out. I've got a 100 mL ink waste bottle attached to my Epson R3000. I had to empty once this year, and that was only because I had to do an ink charge which does use a lot of ink. In one year, I've gone through roughly 150 mL ink x 8 inks = 1200 mL ink. Normal cleans have used about 100 mL in the year. I use Conecolor ink so the ink cost from cleaning works out to $20/year.

Also, by using refillable cartridges (or CISS as The Hat recommends), you eliminate wasting ink left in the OEM cartridges. The printer won't let you run an OEM cartridge dry, that would be bad for the printer.

Larry

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I've found that printhead cleaning doesn't use nearly as much ink as people claim.

I have not seen any serious numbers about the actual ink consumption during cleaning cycles from test reports or users. Some of the service/maintenance manuals for some products give a clue about that, I have seen quotes like .25ml/color and .35 ml for an extended cleaning cycle, or .75 to 1ml total per cleaning cycle for 4 to 5 color printers. The ink amount depends as well on the number of installed cartridges/colors and the number of nozzles so there are lots of variables. I'm running a R265 with a CISS and an external waste ink bottle which I empty much mor frequently, my qualified guess from various tests tell me that about 1/3 of the total ink goes into the waste ink bottle from the cleaning cycle - a cartridge reset for one color always washes away the same amount of the other 5 inks. I once did a test and was just printing black - text, and with grayscale setting on normal paper which just uses the black ink channel. I was re-using the left over waste ink in the black cartdridge , recycling that ink, but the waste ink bottle still filled up pretty quickly since all the other colors - unused for printing - got cleaned away nevertheless. Every printer model, the firmware behaves differently in this respect.
Lots of magazines etc test printers on lots of aspects, but I have not seen any test so far, over lots of years which was actually measuring the waste ink in relation to the printed ink consumption. It's the hidden benefit for the printer/ink suppliers to make profit even with ink which gets wasted, and only refill can counteract that.