The inkjet cartridges mafia
I am not a greedy person, or at least I hope I am not. I find it perfectly normal to pay for services and goods that help us in our daily work, but there is one think that always pisses me off: inkjet cartridges. Needless to mention that I am writing this post after having my printer making my day awful.
There is several things that really get me mad with cartridges:
- The ridiculous price of printers. Then once you are stucked with their machine they just start to rip you off.
- Drying ink. You know, when you didn’t use your printer for a week or a little more and the cartridges’ heads are dry, letting you waste some ink and paper.
- Cleaning processes. Once out of three printing you make, they’ll be some ugly white lines that ruin it all. It means that you have to go through a head-cleaning process, which will empty about one third of the cartridge.
- Comic Sans MS. Well no… that actually was random, but Comic Sans MS really pisses me off sometimes, even if it has nothing to do with ink cartridges.
Does anyone have a solution to replace those shitty inkjet printers? I’ve thought of buying a laser printer, but the printing quality really sucks too much. Using generic cartridges doesn’t seem to be really safe yet, so I really don’t know how to spend less on printing…
Popularity: 13% [?]
wow, that’s an eye-catching chart. Is that for real?
I know people who just buy the ink and refill cartridges themselves for a lot of savings, but I’ve never tried it.
Mirko, I totally agree with you here.
Every single time I try and use my inkjet printer (which thankfully is very limited recently) I have to clean the print heads or replace a cartridge or both, it’s a bloody pain in the butt (butt pocket too).
I think the makers of these printers (no names, you know who you are) purposely create these problems so they can fleece you for every penny you got.
Well thats my rant for the day!
@Tzaddi: yes, I think it is based on real numbers, but it’s a bit outdated I guess.
@Andy G: I agree with you, these ink wasting processes might as well be intended.
Here at the Museum we use both the inkjet and a Xerox solid ink printer.. while the ink for the solid ink printer costs more (complete fill up with Xerox ink around $400, but there are compatible inks for less on the web that cut the price to less than $200) Each fill up does 3400 pages in full colour. while our injet printers which are about $55 a pop to repleace all the cartridges cna only do about 100 to 200 colour pages before we have to replace them.
The added bonus with the Xerox printer is great looking prints.. So you have a choice a pricer system that prints great looking stuff including photos, and the crappier inkjet stuff.
With typical ink jet cartridges costs ranging
from $25.00 - $40.00, and “sets”, i.e.the black
and one or two color carts. going from $55.00 -
70.00, I’ve always refilled my own.
Prob. was only ~ 50% suc. so I cut a cart in 1/2
lengthwise down the middle to find why.
There is a 2-3mm dia. chamber at the bottom,
where the ink must accumulate. It is covered by
a very fine mesh filter. This filter clogs
with low or int. use. The ink in the chamber then clumps & drys. Game over???
No siree. Best fix: Use a fine (22g) needle and syr. filled with H2O through the fill hole, insert ALL the way to the bottom & puncture it. (Go ahead, take a chance.) Carefully inj. small vol.of H20, like 1 or 2 drops, flush and asp. the chamber until clean.
Now refill with ink as usual.
The pc of foam takes up 95% of the cart. Normally the foam MUST be saturated B4 ink will flow across the filt. into chamb, so always take the time to fill slowly but all the way to the top.
Once the interface between the foam & filt.is wetted up, cap.action will maint. flow. This is still true even though there is now a small hole in the filter. The hole will NOT cause the cart to leak. You do not risk pucnt.the mylar
because the outlets at the bottom of the chamb. are to either side, not the middle.
ALTERNATIVE
Carefully cut off cart top. Take out foam. Now you can visualize the chamb.filt. and just use 2 drops of CA to put top back on.
RULE 1: Wear disp. gloves ad glasses.
RULE 2: ALWAYS wear disp. gloves and glasses
Now use all the ink you want @ about 50 c/gl.
Good luck, MCB, Hemlock Engineering LLC