Dirty Little Secret of Inkjet Printers

That is why you don’t buy the cheap $40 dollar printer, you buy at least the $150 all-in-one.

Man, that sucks. Good thing I don’t bother with all that printer nonsense and just print my shit out on campus. :)

lol And every one ask my why i keep my Epson FX-850 Printer.

This many sound dumb. But here some quick tips. You save buy having 2 printers.

Use dot matrix printers for most documents and text stuff and your ink jets for images.

Remove inkjet cartridges after using. Clean nozzle heads with alcohol or (vinegar & water mix) and soft paper towel.

Store cartridges in ziplock bag with most paper towel till needed.

You can extend the life on printer ribbon by opening rewinding them. then sparing lightly with WD-40

Don’t know it that helps any one but. I had the free time.

Could not find the ink swamp in my cheap $40 dollar printer.

HP Deskjet 3900

The real killer here, Inkjet ink is the most precious fluid on the planet! If these clowns are going to waste all the ink, I demand a buy-back policy for the ink swamp scrapings!

I always knew the machines were constantly starting themselves up and and pissing a little ink. The alternative, clogged jets, is way worse frankly. I’ve been amazed at how much better modern inkjets are at keeping their heads clean than the older models.

P.S. to morepowerr: The Epson 850 series is not immune. In fact I’d rather the 850 wasted more ink at keeping its heads clean. Since its nozzles are not built into the ink cartridge, clearing the clogs is really miserable work.

well it sounds logical… they have to ensure the nozzle is clean for the next pass so they clear it with ink…. the sad part is they haven’t found a better way to implement said clearing… maybe have a reusable “cleaner” cartridge that just pumped something less expensive through the hole, they have the reservoir recycle it back into the cartridge or something.

I used to work in a computer service shop. I would look at printers like this every day. You won’t believe how many people would pay to get it fixed then get a new one.

It is usually cheaper to buy a new printer then replace all the inks in the land Down Under.

I think I will be taking apart mine when I buy a new one come this summer.

yea.. dot matrix printers are the way to go…. (or we could enter the later 20th century and use a laser printer)…

New HP printers recycle the ink back into the cartridge during cleaning.

@JON

laser printers FTW

(pew pew)

Obvius FAKE….

I have a large format (prints 13×19) Canon printer, that prints beautiful photos, till after a couple years I got thia similar message about the reservoir. It would cost about $100 to get Canon to service it–far less than buying a new one, but still about $100 more than I thought I should pay–but then I found online step-by-step instructions to change the reservoir pad, alongside tips to keep it from unnecessarily cleaning its nozzles.

Better still, I found instructions to reset the counter within the printer. Believe it or not, the printer doesn’t tell you when the reservoir is full, it tells you when it thinks it might be, based on how many times you turn it on and off. If it’s on and off daily (what, you’re trying to save electricity, you planet-hugging dreamer?), it thinks you’re filling up the reservoir faster. Also every time you have it “clean” the print heads.

It’s all a crock of…well, let’s say ink, since if there’s anything wrong ever, the tech support people tell you to clean the nozzles several times. But when you buy it, no one tells you that you’re buying something that’s deliberately disposable.

Of course, at some point that reservoir might actually be full, and then I’ve got to suck it up and try to get the whole thing apart to replace the pad. You can replace them for practically free, all you need is in the “women’s needs” section of the pharmacy, one sack of pads should last your printer your lifetime. Come to think of it, I really ought to try doing that some time BEFORE the reservoir overflows and oozes ink everywhere.

I don’t really care about the wasted ink, that might be necessary for it to function…but surely it’s a deliberate design feature of these printers that you can’t get to the waste pad without entirely taking the printer apart. Clearly, they WANT you to buy a whole new printer, since that’s what they’re selling…but it’s a total waste of money and materials. I’d definitely switch printer brands next time if there was a printer that had as good output but also had a little tray I could periodically swap out.

” yea.. dot matrix printers are the way to go…. (or we could enter the later 20th century and use a laser printer)… ”

Laser printer would be nice if you can afford one or have your company write it off. But for some people the cash is just not there.

I know that may not dawn on many of you upper middle class types that don’t live on have to live on ramen. To afford the 3.45 a gal gas. To run you to work because the town live and work in have no concept of public transportation.

But i can tell for many of use on SSI,SSDI & Minimum Wage. A $30 used Dot Matrix with $6 ribbon. Is a lot more economical then a used or new laser printer with a $50 Cartridge.

Ya it may look nice but for something as simple as printing out text. It is overkill.

Ximo, shush time.

@MOREPOWERR

You just won the internet. Please come to Town Hall to receive your key.

You think that’s a lot of ink? I have a Roland XC540 wide format banner printer that puts out about half a pop can 6oz or so each time it cleans it’s print heads and it does that once a week. There’s an actual resivoir that needs to be capped and sent to the same place you take old house paint to be disposed of.