Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: Justinr on June 07, 2012, 12:11:13 pm
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I run an Epson R2880 and although ink cartridges have remained the same price for the last couple of years I'm damn sure they are not lasting as long. Would it only be a miserable cynic such as myself that suggests that they are not putting as much ink in them so increasing/maintaining their margin that way rather than an upfront price increase? It would also explain why printer manufacturers have never been clear on individual print costs, that would entail them ensuring a consistent quantity of ink in the cartridge so not allowing this sort of manipulation.
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If the cartridge or packaging or product description says how much ink is supposed to be included, it would be illegal for them to put less and I can't imagine a firm like Epson exposing themselves in this manner. This is either a figment of your imagination, or possibly that the kind of images you are printing is somehow different, or that the printer is using more ink for maintenance (ink is used for both printing and maintenance). Different image densities use different amounts of ink. I have seen myself that there is a very large difference of average ink consumption, for example, between winter scenes and other scenes.
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The cartridges are "chipped", one of the reasons being so it can warn you in advance that you are getting low on ink. How much is actually left I am not certain, I continue to use mine (although I have upgraded from a 2400 to a 3880) for some time after I get the warning. Some say that with Epsons you can keep printing until it runs out, even mid print, at which point the printer stops, you change the cartridge, and continue printing. I have not let any go that long on my printers though.
Perhaps your impression that the inks are emptied quicker has to do with the chip setting threshold being changed over the years by the manufacturer (just guessing here). If you print certain types of images most times then certain inks will empty quicker, for instance landscapes or portraits. As an aside I can say that the 3880 is much more "thrifty" on ink than it's littler brothers are, the larger formats even more so.
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The Epson does not appear to have any indication of quantity of ink included either on the package or the cartridge itself, the Canon cartridges for the other printer do though. However, this does not mean to say that they can't reduce the amount of ink, just so long as they state the amount supplied. There are probably not many people watching things that closely.
The cost of inkjet prints was quite a hot subject a few years back with my argument being that if a printer can tell you that you are low on ink why can it not tell you how much ink it is using? It is like having a fuel gauge that only starts working when the tank is near empty, a bit nonsensical when you think about it. Is it really beyond the wit of man to devise a standard test for ink consumption? Naturally winter scenes will use less ink because more white paper is left exposed but a test card could surely be devised that indicates how much ink your printer will use in producing it. This can then be used in comparing printers and papers to optimise printing costs.
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The cartridges are "chipped", one of the reasons being so it can warn you in advance that you are getting low on ink. How much is actually left I am not certain, I continue to use mine (although I have upgraded from a 2400 to a 3880) for some time after I get the warning. Some say that with Epsons you can keep printing until it runs out, even mid print, at which point the printer stops, you change the cartridge, and continue printing. I have not let any go that long on my printers though.
Perhaps your impression that the inks are emptied quicker has to do with the chip setting threshold being changed over the years by the manufacturer (just guessing here). If you print certain types of images most times then certain inks will empty quicker, for instance landscapes or portraits. As an aside I can say that the 3880 is much more "thrifty" on ink than it's littler brothers are, the larger formats even more so.
This is the nub of the matter. How does that chip know how much ink is left? If it is counting the number of cycles then surely working out how much ink has been used for a print is just a question of toting up the numbers from each cartridge.
As a rule I find the Epson won't start a print if it thinks there is not enough ink to finish it, or I assume that's why because it won't print until I've changed the offending cartridge. So how does it know?
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If you do want to lower you ink costs maybe it is good advice to change your printer to a bigger, more professional used one.
Your ink and paper cost will be cut by 60-70%-
The printer will cost more but it is made more robust and you can print larger ( I am talking about 24inch and bigger printers).
I am using a HP Z3100 6 years now and it is very consistent in output; had to repair it once (100€ parts)
The way I use it it will go on for a long time ... I am at 25% of use before i have to do a service..
Just an idea
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I can't answer the OP about whether the 2880 carts have changed, but regarding low ink, all Epson printers will stop printing when the cart is depleted, the printer will stop, change the empty with a new ink and it will start right up again with no sign - on the print - that the image was stopped mid-stream. If you change a cart before this, you are certainly throwing away usable ink. In addition, all Epson printers using aqueous ink will lay down ~1.5ml of total ink per square foot, assuming full coverage and little white space. From my personal experience, I've had a 2200, 3800 and 11880 all stop when the cart is depleted and start right up when it is replaced. I once had a customer who ran out of yellow on his 11880 on a Friday, let it sit all weekend, replace the empty on Monday and finished the print. He was happily amazed and happy not to lose a large print in the process.
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As a rule I find the Epson won't start a print if it thinks there is not enough ink to finish it, or I assume that's why because it won't print until I've changed the offending cartridge. So how does it know?
Interesting. As a rule I've never seen an Epson refuse to print a print because it thinks it doesn't have enough ink, only refuse to clean because it doesn't think it has enough ink. However I don't use the small cartridge 2880. The printer will normally stop and ask for new ink when it runs out, which is often after the indicator has been on 0% for some time. On the large printers, as much as 10% of the ink still remains, enough for a large number of prints, when the indicator says it is empty.
As far as putting less ink in the cartridges I would be surprised. Ink consumption is extremely variable based on print subject matter, paper choices and print settings. Epson provides pretty detailed ink consumption expectations ...
"Ink Yield Information:
Epson provides ink cartridge yields based on the ISO / IEC 24711 and 24712 standard for inkjet products, which excludes the first installed cartridges.
Matte Black (T096820): About 495 pages
Light Black (T096720): About 6,210 pages
Light Light Black (T096920): About 6,065 pages
Cyan, Vivid Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, and Vivid Light Magenta (T096220, T096320, T096420, T096520, T096620): About 940 pages per color"
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There is a simple way to measure the amount of ink of your cartridges.
Weigh a full and a empty cartridge. The difference is your volume. Assuming that the average weight of ink is about the same as of water.
I did it, out of curiousity, once with my 220ml cartridges and the results were pretty close.
Ton
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If my memory is correct ( and it sometimes isn't ), Epson settled a class action suit some years back, that had to do with the printers indicating that a cartridge was out of ink, when it in fact. had some ink left. I don't remember the specifics beyond that, but do remember getting a credit from/to be used with Epson, as part of the settlement; I owned an Epson printer during the time period.
That said, I have run my printers until they stopped in the middle of a print and replaced a cartridge, without any noticeable effect.
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There is another factor that adds to increasing irritation with ink usage over time on many desktop and 13" prosumer inkjet models. When the printer is first set up, even with 25% or so of the initial ink set being used to prime the lines, the initial number of prints you can make seems quite respectable. Say you got 30 big prints out of your first set of eight cartridges on your 2880 before the first cartridge went empty, and that with fully primed lines you might have gotten 40 prints total. Now consider what happens if all eight cartridges eventually get out of sync and become rather evenly distributed in remaining ink levels from 1 cart being brand new, 1 being nearly empty, and the other 6 at various intervals in between. Now on average, instead of 40 prints from all full cartridges, 40/8 = 5 prints becomes the average print session interval where the printer is going to call for a new cart. The printer really hasn't changed its ink consumption. It's just that you are now witnessing more clearly how many prints can be made from the equivalent volume of just one cartridge, not all 8 cartridges acting in unison. The "new printer honeymoon" is over. It may take several sets of cartridges in your printer before things get significantly out of sync on ink levels, but eventually it happens.
Practical ways around this annoying ink consumption routine are to upgrade to a printer that has higher volumes of ink in each cartridge and can thus make more prints per cartridge, or install a CISS with third party inks (but that's another can of worms).
best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
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One issue in the ink equation is how much you actually print. For example if I upgraded from my 3880 with its 80ml carts to a 220ml cart machine, I likely would end up replacing some carts before they were empty just because of their age, something that would seriously gripe me given what OEM ink costs. Fortunately, I have a friend with a 24" printer I can borrow when I want to print bigger.
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I can't answer the OP about whether the 2880 carts have changed, but regarding low ink, all Epson printers will stop printing when the cart is depleted, the printer will stop, change the empty with a new ink and it will start right up again with no sign - on the print - that the image was stopped mid-stream. If you change a cart before this, you are certainly throwing away usable ink. In addition, all Epson printers using aqueous ink will lay down ~1.5ml of total ink per square foot, assuming full coverage and little white space. From my personal experience, I've had a 2200, 3800 and 11880 all stop when the cart is depleted and start right up when it is replaced. I once had a customer who ran out of yellow on his 11880 on a Friday, let it sit all weekend, replace the empty on Monday and finished the print. He was happily amazed and happy not to lose a large print in the process.
This one certainly doesn't stop midway through a print, but then I gather its a bit of an oddball machine anyway being the only Epson printer with cartridges exclusive to it, or so I am told. Unfortunately there won't be any upgrading until the economy picks up and folk start spending money again, could be a long wait!
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There is a simple way to measure the amount of ink of your cartridges.
Ton
I just replaced a 220ml cart yesterday - the old cart had 48ml of ink remaining as measured with a syringe. A previous empty cart measured 57ml remaining. Every time I throw out an empty cart I throw away $25-$35 worth of ink or about 20-25% of the cartridge capacity.
I also weighed a new and empty maintenance tank. Not taking into account the amount of ink that evaporates over the course of a year or so, when I threw out my last maintenance tank I also threw away $525 worth of waste ink along with it. Over the last year waste ink cost me about $52 per month. I've already spent more on waste ink than the cost of the printer itself, and I have a relatively low print volume.
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Not to say your calculations are not accurate, but weigh a new ink cart, write the gram weight on the cart and weigh it again when the printer stops printing, due to that color being depleted, and you'll have the total usable ink that was extracted from that cart. Even though there is ink left, you don't know how much ink was in the cart when it was installed. This may confirm your numbers OR there may be closer to 220ml of usable ink in a cart.
Edit - apologies to tongelsing who already made this suggestion - D'oh. :)
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The numbers in your calculations scared me enough to finally do something with the numbers I gathered over a year ago.
From my own measurements
Difference between full and empty cartridge 387-179=208g
difference between full and empty maintenance tank 926-365=561g
(maybe someone has the weight of a bone dry disassembled cart?)
if, as you say, there is 48ml remaining in an empty cart (assuming 220ml is actual amount and not 220ml+48ml) then 220-48=172ml which is equal to 208g (1.2g/ml) therefore weight of ink in maintenance tank/1.2 = 467.5ml which is equivalent to just over two 220ml carts (€180ish). Still outlandish, but 'tank'fully not as scary as the number in your calculations.
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Not to say your calculations are not accurate, but weigh a new ink cart, write the gram weight on the cart and weigh it again when the printer stops printing, due to that color being depleted, and you'll have the total usable ink that was extracted from that cart. Even though there is ink left, you don't know how much ink was in the cart when it was installed. This may confirm your numbers OR there may be closer to 220ml of usable ink in a cart.
Edit - apologies to tongelsing who already made this suggestion - D'oh. :)
No - you will have the weight of the liquid that was consumed in printing and in maintenance until the cart declared itself to be "empty" (which it is not). Unless you know the specific gravity of the liquid you cannot accurately translate the grams to ml, and there is no particular reason to assume that the specific gravity of the ink is the same as that of water unless somewhere Epson confirmed this to be so. My understanding based on what I've learned from numerous exchanges on this subject - the total content of a stated 220 ml cartridge is 220 ml. That is, if you were to open and empty a new cartridge into a beaker it would fill to the level of 220 ml if that is the marked fill. However, in order to the protect the integrity of the print head these cartridges are programmed to stop feeding ink before the cartridge actually empties, because if air gets pumped into the head there could be damage. I could not get clarity on exactly how much ink is programmed to remain, so over time when i still owned my 4800 I used to periodically empty the remainder of "empty" cartridges into a beaker and found that with some variance the amount was usually in the range of a liquid ounce or so. That was about 4 or 5 years ago.
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No - you will have the weight of the liquid that was consumed in printing and in maintenance until the cart declared itself to be "empty" (which it is not). Unless you know the specific gravity of the liquid you cannot accurately translate the grams to ml, and there is no particular reason to assume that the specific gravity of the ink is the same as that of water unless somewhere Epson confirmed this to be so. My understanding based on what I've learned from numerous exchanges on this subject - the total content of a stated 220 ml cartridge is 220 ml. That is, if you were to open and empty a new cartridge into a beaker it would fill to the level of 220 ml if that is the marked fill. However, in order to the protect the integrity of the print head these cartridges are programmed to stop feeding ink before the cartridge actually empties, because if air gets pumped into the head there could be damage. I could not get clarity on exactly how much ink is programmed to remain, so over time when i still owned my 4800 I used to periodically empty the remainder of "empty" cartridges into a beaker and found that with some variance the amount was usually in the range of a liquid ounce or so. That was about 4 or 5 years ago.
The density is likely to be less than water because of the organics in the ink formulation but one can still do the experiment that was outlined. Mark, I'm surprised at the highlighted statement. When I did the patent search, it showed that Epson has the ink inside a pouch that contracts with usage and this design feature should preclude air getting into the line since once the bag is empty, nothing enters the line. Finally one ounce seems like a lot to be left over (it is roughly 30 ml). I thought you had a 3800 and not a 4800 but irrespective, how big were the cartridges in question? The 3880 has 80ml cartridges and if 30ml were left that would be an astounding waste (though I've never tried to empty a spent cartridge to see how much is left.
Alan
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The density is likely to be less than water because of the organics in the ink formulation but one can still do the experiment that was outlined. Mark, I'm surprised at the highlighted statement. When I did the patent search, it showed that Epson has the ink inside a pouch that contracts with usage and this design feature should preclude air getting into the line since once the bag is empty, nothing enters the line. Finally one ounce seems like a lot to be left over (it is roughly 30 ml). I thought you had a 3800 and not a 4800 but irrespective, how big were the cartridges in question? The 3880 has 80ml cartridges and if 30ml were left that would be an astounding waste (though I've never tried to empty a spent cartridge to see how much is left.
Alan
Hi Alan - yes the ink is in a poly-bag inside the outer shell. Maybe they don't think the contraction is sufficient to be totally safe in this respect. I'm relating experience with an Epson 4800 which I owned before the 3800. It takes 110 or 220 ml cartridges, therefore much larger and that printer has longer lines from the cartridges to the printhead than in a 3800. Different printers, different ink, different delivery system. Not being a printer engineer I have no idea what impact those differences would have to the ink retention criteria. I can only relate what I researched and found out.
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I weighed some ink with a scale that's accurate to 1/100th of a gram. 10ml of ink weighs 10.78g (slightly heavier than water which weighs 10g for 10ml).
I found another empty 220ml cart and it's leftover ink weighed in at 53.67 grams. The liquid measure came to about 50ml, which is roughly the average of leftover ink in the three empty carts I measured.
I was also curious to see how much ink a cleaning cycle uses - a before and after weighing of the maintenance tank shows that it was 12.33 grams heavier after one cleaning cycle.
As for the difference in weight between empty and full maintenance tanks, IIRC in my case it was about 39 ounces, but thinking back I had a few nasty head clogs and a good portion of that weight was probably Windex that drained into the tank. Still, it would seem that there's about two or three 220ml carts worth of ink tossed out in a full maintenance tank.
This is all with a 4800, BTW.
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I just replaced a 220ml cart yesterday - the old cart had 48ml of ink remaining as measured with a syringe. A previous empty cart measured 57ml remaining. Every time I throw out an empty cart I throw away $25-$35 worth of ink or about 20-25% of the cartridge capacity.
So did you replace it because the printer said the cartridge was empty, or were you in the middle of a print and the printer stopped and told you it was empty and need replaced?
The printer will always tell you the ink is gone when there is 10 to 15% ink remaining. But it will merrily print for a long time after wards. I've had the printer stop midpoint and ask for a new ink cartridge many times and never once did I end up with a bad print.
I've also opened a couple of cartridges after I've done this, and there isn't much ink left. I can only assume the printer estimates consumption and records it to the cartridge, but the technology to sense when it needs to change cartridges is different, and isn't based on consumption but something it can detect. I know many fear getting "air" in the line but I believe the system is designed to purge small air bubbles just before they get to the head.
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So did you replace it because the printer said the cartridge was empty, or were you in the middle of a print and the printer stopped and told you it was empty and need replaced?
I always print until the printer stops printing. Before the last cart replacement the status monitor showed 3% remaining at the start of a 13x19 and the printer stopped about halfway through the print. Like yourself I've never had any problems or ruined prints doing a mid-print cart replacement.
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Hi Alan - yes the ink is in a poly-bag inside the outer shell. Maybe they don't think the contraction is sufficient to be totally safe in this respect. I'm relating experience with an Epson 4800 which I owned before the 3800. It takes 110 or 220 ml cartridges, therefore much larger and that printer has longer lines from the cartridges to the printhead than in a 3800. Different printers, different ink, different delivery system. Not being a printer engineer I have no idea what impact those differences would have to the ink retention criteria. I can only relate what I researched and found out.
I'm almost ready to replace on of the cartridges in my 3880. I'm going to weigh it and compare it to the full cartridge and will also try to dissemble it to see what's going on. If your 4800 remains was with the 220 ml cartridge, that is over 10% which as I noted surprises me. However, it depends on the construction of the plastic outer shell. Having experimented with tetra pack juice boxes when my kids were younger, you cannot get all the juice out if you seal the straw to the opening. The box will contract so much and then it stops (it was a nifty science fair project). The same thing can happen with the ink cartridges, depending on the design.
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This is the nub of the matter. How does that chip know how much ink is left? If it is counting the number of cycles then surely working out how much ink has been used for a print is just a question of toting up the numbers from each cartridge.
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The printer does not know how much ink is left. It knows how much ink the cart started with, and how much ink it has requested.
Normally, the amount of ink requested is the amount used, unless you have a clog. Print a page when a nozzle is clogged, and it counts the ink that should have printed, not the smaller amount if ink actually used. Run a cleaning cycle to clear a clog, and it counts the ink it tried to use, even though only a smaller amount was used.
In extreme cases with a stubborn clog, you can have a mostly full cart that reads empty and is unusable.
On the plus side, you can open these carts up, and you get a lot of ink you can use for spotting damaged prints.
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Print a page when a nozzle is clogged, and it counts the ink that should have printed, not the smaller amount if ink actually used. Run a cleaning cycle to clear a clog, and it counts the ink it tried to use, even though only a smaller amount was used.
In extreme cases with a stubborn clog, you can have a mostly full cart that reads empty and is unusable.
Could you please tell us how you know this information?
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Could you please tell us how you know this information?
Common sense, agreement with general reports on the net, and looking through various Epson service manuals.
Experience and Epson manuals tell us that the only way to check for a clog is to print from each nozzle and verify that ink hit the paper. The printers that self test for clogs do it by printing test patterns and then looking at the paper to make sure the patterns printed correctly.
If the printer was able to measure ink flow, then there would be no need to waste paper on a nozzle check. The printer could spit ink directly into the spittoon, and verify that the ink flowed for each nozzle fired. The fact that Epson includes an optical sensor for self checks is evidence that the printer can't measure ink flow. In fact, the printer wouldn't have to waste ink in order to check the nozzles. If the printer could measure ink flow, it would know there was a clog anytime the requested ink amounts did not match the measured ink amounts.
If you look at the various service manuals you will see that there is no part of the printer that actually measures ink and reports back to the controller. Furthermore, there are no failure modes described related to failures to measure ink flow.
If you do a web search, you will find that it is possible to accurately measure the amount of ink in a cartridge by weighing it. You will find many reports of people who have battled with stubborn clogs, only to end up with mostly full cartridges that are unusable as their controller chips think they are empty.
I would be much happier with a printer that did measure actual ink usage. It would never require a separate nozzle check. It would automatically detect clogs during the normal course of printing. When clearing a clog, it could detect when the clog was cleared, and stop the cleaning process when the clog cleared, as opposed to mindless wasting ink in the hope it had spurted enough.
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If the printer was able to measure ink flow, then there would be no need to waste paper on a nozzle check. The printer could spit ink directly into the spittoon, and verify that the ink flowed for each nozzle fired.
Which I believe is pretty much exactly what the latest generation of wide format Epson models do. If you leave the default auto checks on, the printer checks itself periodically but does not actually "print" anything to do so. If it detects a problem it auto runs a clean cycle. It seems to run a "pairs" cleaning only as it doesn't consistently ask to replace carts that are at 1 percent before performing the clean. Sometimes it does. I assume then it that the channel being cleaned is one that is also very low.
A lot of us instinctively turned off the auto checks when we got these printers because of how inefficient checks were on earlier models. They burned lots of media and time uselessly and there was no such thing as a "pairs" clean so a lot of ink was needlessly consumed. This new method is quite painless and efficient.
If there's an evil conspiracy plot afoot, it's in the way the ink counters work on the latest generation of printers. Every ink cart's usage is quite consistent until it hits 1 percent. At that point, it will sit on 1 percent while it continues the print and print for ages. I ran 33 feet of heavy ink coverage on 44" wide paper with a photo black cart that had already been on 1 percent for quite a while. That cart is still able to print this morning. I'm sure a lot of users see 1 percent and just toss it rather than deal with having to swap carts out numerous time for cleaning cycles. Do that and you're needlessly tossing out enough ink for a LOT of prints. Earlier generation printers indicated empty fairly predictably after hitting "low". These new printers will print and print and print with what you think (based on the counter) are the last few drops of ink.
Bob Smith
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Common sense, agreement with general reports on the net, and looking through various Epson service manuals.
Experience and Epson manuals tell us that the only way to check for a clog is to print from each nozzle and verify that ink hit the paper. The printers that self test for clogs do it by printing test patterns and then looking at the paper to make sure the patterns printed correctly.
If the printer was able to measure ink flow, then there would be no need to waste paper on a nozzle check. The printer could spit ink directly into the spittoon, and verify that the ink flowed for each nozzle fired. The fact that Epson includes an optical sensor for self checks is evidence that the printer can't measure ink flow. In fact, the printer wouldn't have to waste ink in order to check the nozzles. If the printer could measure ink flow, it would know there was a clog anytime the requested ink amounts did not match the measured ink amounts.
If you look at the various service manuals you will see that there is no part of the printer that actually measures ink and reports back to the controller. Furthermore, there are no failure modes described related to failures to measure ink flow.
If you do a web search, you will find that it is possible to accurately measure the amount of ink in a cartridge by weighing it. You will find many reports of people who have battled with stubborn clogs, only to end up with mostly full cartridges that are unusable as their controller chips think they are empty.
I would be much happier with a printer that did measure actual ink usage. It would never require a separate nozzle check. It would automatically detect clogs during the normal course of printing. When clearing a clog, it could detect when the clog was cleared, and stop the cleaning process when the clog cleared, as opposed to mindless wasting ink in the hope it had spurted enough.
OK, I see where you are coming from and perhaps your observations are well taken. There are some issues however.
(1) With the Epson 4900, and likely other models too, there is an Auto Nozzle check and cleaning procedure that does not require running nozzle checks or test patterns on paper. I don't know how much ink printer spends to do this. Probably minimal and it knows this volume and accounts for it when it does the checking. The latter is presumption - I'm not a printer engineer.
(2) Service manuals don't tell everything about a machine. They tell what service technicians need to know for repairing them, which would usually be a smaller universe of information.
(3) I agree relative weight (full versus at replacement), complemented by specific gravity data, would indicate the amount of ink the cartridge actually consumed and one can compare that with the stated volume on the label to know the residual. That said, it has become more difficult over the years to easily separate information over the life of a cartridge about ink for prints versus ink for maintenance.
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If there's an evil conspiracy plot afoot, it's in the way the ink counters work on the latest generation of printers. Every ink cart's usage is quite consistent until it hits 1 percent. At that point, it will sit on 1 percent while it continues the print and print for ages. I ran 33 feet of heavy ink coverage on 44" wide paper with a photo black cart that had already been on 1 percent for quite a while. That cart is still able to print this morning. I'm sure a lot of users see 1 percent and just toss it rather than deal with having to swap carts out numerous time for cleaning cycles. Do that and you're needlessly tossing out enough ink for a LOT of prints. Earlier generation printers indicated empty fairly predictably after hitting "low". These new printers will print and print and print with what you think (based on the counter) are the last few drops of ink.
Bob Smith
Yes this is my experience too - ignore those warnings and print until they won't print any longer.
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(Mark Segal) Unless you know the specific gravity of the liquid you cannot accurately translate the grams to ml, and there is no particular reason to assume that the specific gravity of the ink is the same as that of water unless somewhere Epson confirmed this to be so.
Wired magazine periodically "disassembles" various consumer goods like dishwashing soap, WD-40, toothpaste, etc. Their analysis of inkjet ink resulted in the conclusion that inkjet ink is 95% water. This would be very easy to verify by simply weighing a sample of ink.
Stating that the chips on the carts are necessary to indicate to the user the level of ink in the cart is horse poo. Transparent carts and bladders would enable the user to accurately monitor ink levels. Once installed, I don't believe the cart talks to the printer ever again. The chip is a one-time verification device. Bi-lateral communication between the printer and the cart is unnecessary and expensive to implement. The printer calculates ink remaining by integrating ink use and could still accurately warn the user of impending depletion.
Chips in maintenance tanks are expressly designed to prohibit their re-use. This egregious practice is (or was) under investigation by the EU.
It's painfully apparent that proprietary, chipped-cart ink systems are a business model, not an engineering choice. I would happily pay more for my printer if I could fill half-liter-sized reservoirs with bulk ink. That way, I could afford to use my printer for its intended use: printing.
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I had a "shocking" discovery!! I have opened my recent "empty 220ml photoblack cartridge" and measured the amount of residual ink.
It was 30ml. Quite a lot. Over ten percent!! I expected much less. I weighted the ink and it was 33grams, so indeed the average weight of ink is about 1,1.
But I rather waste some ink than wasting my prints.
I'm using a 7880 and I always print with a near empty cartridge until the printer stops.
By the way; the inkcolor of my wastetank is very dark cyangreenish (r4-g70-b72).
What are your colors??
Ton
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Wired magazine periodically "disassembles" various consumer goods like dishwashing soap, WD-40, toothpaste, etc. Their analysis of inkjet ink resulted in the conclusion that inkjet ink is 95% water. This would be very easy to verify by simply weighing a sample of ink.
This is not true. You can get the compositions of Epson ink cartidges by looking at the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). I did this last year at some point when we were discussing outgassing and put up the information on a previous thread. Key components are 1) dyes/pigments, 2) proprietary organics, 3) glycerols, and 4) water. On a weight basis water is usually between 60-75% depending on the color and formulation.
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Once installed, I don't believe the cart talks to the printer ever again. The chip is a one-time verification device.
Not true on the larger printers at least. I can swap partially full carts and the printer instantly knows the level of each. I can put a partially full cart into a printer that has never seen that particular cart before and the printer instantly knows the amount of ink in that cart. Ink use is clearly determined by some sort of counter... but it appears that counter is stored on... or at least updated on... the chip on the ink cart itself.
Bob Smith
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Not true on the larger printers at least. I can swap partially full carts and the printer instantly knows the level of each. I can put a partially full cart into a printer that has never seen that particular cart before and the printer instantly knows the amount of ink in that cart. Ink use is clearly determined by some sort of counter... but it appears that counter is stored on... or at least updated on... the chip on the ink cart itself.
Bob Smith
Correct. I've been swapping between 80 ml starter and 200ml replacement tanks in my 4900 and what you say is what I see.
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I stand corrected on the chip communications issue. Thank you. It would appear that remaining ink volume is stored on the cart. I've never substituted a partially filled cart.
As for Wired and water percentage, I can only defer to them. If the glycerols and "proprietary organics" are of the same specific gravity as water, their presence or absence could not be determined by weight alone.
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Ink quantities could be stored on the printer vs the cart and still be updated when you swap carts back and forth, the printer firmware just needs to rember multiple cart ids and calculated quantities per color. Easy to store away the data for the last xx carts of each color and load it when the cart reports the id.
I think it is more likely one way communication, with the chip sending an id and the printer firmware doing the rest, but who knows...
A test where a single cart was used in more than one printer would put the question to rest.
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A test where a single cart was used in more than one printer would put the question to rest.
I can put a partially full cart into a printer that has never seen that particular cart before and the printer instantly knows the amount of ink in that cart.
Epson and Canon cartridges with chips maintain the status information on the chip, as Bob has noted (and as a cottage industry of salty old chip resetter manufacturers will attest). No idea what HP does. It would, however, be incredibly customer hostile and self-defeating to do it any other way. In a production environment, cartridges routinely get moved between machines. After a warranty replacement, cartridges get moved between machines. Nobody wants the earful from the printer owner or the warranty claim for the head that just had 80mL of imaginary ink run through it.
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A test where a single cart was used in more than one printer would put the question to rest.
As I mentioned above I had exactly that experience due to a printer exchange and the recipient printer read the information from the used cartridge correctly.
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No idea what HP does. It would, however, be incredibly customer hostile and self-defeating to do it any other way. In a production environment, cartridges routinely get moved between machines. After a warranty replacement, cartridges get moved between machines. Nobody wants the earful from the printer owner or the warranty claim for the head that just had 80mL of imaginary ink run through it.
HP stores the data on the cart chip too. I can exchange the carts between two printers and the same content is reported. Ink droplets fired is the usual way the ink use is counted for all brands. Both Canon and HP empty the carts at the end based on other information I guess as there is very little left in the carts when empty, between 1 and 3 ML when I use a syringe to pull the rest out. That has been different with epson carts. The HP 130 ML carts often were somewhat overfilled based on the weight of the new and old carts. Not done that lately so I am not sure that is still the case.
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Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
Dinkla Grafische Techniek
Quad,piëzografie,giclée
www.pigment-print.com
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Just to add a data point to this conversation, I had an experience when a black cart that was showing ink remaining was bone dry. This was when I had been having problems on the 3800 with black ink puddle streaks being laid down. I was baffled at the time, but now I theorize that the printer was calculating the remaining ink using ordinary ink flow rate, but in fact more black had been being laid down because of whatever the problem was -- sort of the flip side of underreporting resuling from nozzle clogs.
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Why are carts opaque? If they were transparent or translucent plastic, we could see exactly how much ink remains and most of these issues would be moot.
Kinda reminds me of the apocryphal story of the NASA space pen and the Russian space pencil.
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The bags are opaque within the cartridges as well. Both to protect against exposure to light (UV, etc).
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The bags are opaque within the cartridges as well. Both to protect against exposure to light (UV, etc).
Though this is curious since the cartridges are already double packaged and when inside the printer not exposed to light. That being said, even if there was a translucent side to the cartridge it would still be difficult to tell how much ink was left given the overall design (the bag that holds the ink collapses as ink is delivered to the printer). The only reliable way to do this (if you don't want to believe the printer's ink indicator) would be to periodically take the cartridge out and weigh it (which would be a real pain in the behind). Since ink costs are low relative to the cost of paper, just don't worry until the cartridge runs out of ink and needs to be replaced.
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If you are selling printing as a service, the cost of ink is an important variable. If you are selling prints it isn't - or at least shouldn't be.
In either case, given the difficulties that exist in micro-measuring consumption, the total inventory approach is really the most practical way of understanding ink costs. We do have total control over knowing the number of square feet of ink coverage we have commissioned from our printers. Keep a record of that in real time. We do have control over knowing how much ink we have bought and consumed in total for the concerned printer - keep track of that, using the information from the printer for an estimate of ink remaining in the tanks. Subtract the remaining ink in the printer and in inventory from the total starting and purchased volumes, and we know reasonably well how much ink we have consumed. At some point after quite a few square feet have been printed (I recommend several hundred), divide the square footage printed into total net ink consumption and you have a decent measure of ink usage per square foot, combined for printing and maintenance. Since both are essential for producing a print, they don't need to be separated to understand total ink cost per print.What we then do with that information I don't know, unless one is printing as a service - in this case it gives decent insight into that element of the cost structure. For people selling prints, other factors will be far more important than the cost of ink.
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It would not be so difficult to create a simple visual indicator actuated by the shrinking ink bag that gives a rough estimation of the cart content. Open an old Epson 9000 cart and it shows how it could be done. On the other hand most users will like a software graphic that shows all carts contents in one window, like it is today. On a big job with a chance an empty cart may reach bottom too early I will put in a full cart and exchange that cart again to empty the old one on small jobs.
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Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
Dinkla Grafische Techniek
Quad,piëzografie,giclée
www.pigment-print.com
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If you are selling printing as a service, the cost of ink is an important variable. If you are selling prints it isn't - or at least shouldn't be.
In either case, given the difficulties that exist in micro-measuring consumption, the total inventory approach is really the most practical way of understanding ink costs. We do have total control over knowing the number of square feet of ink coverage we have commissioned from our printers. Keep a record of that in real time. We do have control over knowing how much ink we have bought and consumed in total for the concerned printer - keep track of that, using the information from the printer for an estimate of ink remaining in the tanks. Subtract the remaining ink in the printer and in inventory from the total starting and purchased volumes, and we know reasonably well how much ink we have consumed. At some point after quite a few square feet have been printed (I recommend several hundred), divide the square footage printed into total net ink consumption and you have a decent measure of ink usage per square foot, combined for printing and maintenance. Since both are essential for producing a print, they don't need to be separated to understand total ink cost per print.What we then do with that information I don't know, unless one is printing as a service - in this case it gives decent insight into that element of the cost structure. For people selling prints, other factors will be far more important than the cost of ink.
That's an interesting point. After running an ipf 6100 for four years I worked out the cost of paper and ink. Firstly though, using the figures in the print driver which show exactly how much ink was consumed for each print, early on I had determined that the paper cost quite a lot more than the ink. However looking at all the paper and ink bought over the four years I was surprised to see that in fact I had spent almost exactly the same on both - around £6500 each. That works out by the way at around 65 30-metre rolls of 24" paper.
Jim
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The bags are opaque within the cartridges as well. Both to protect against exposure to light (UV, etc).
Why? Do these inks not last for decades when exposed to light?
btw, here's the Wired article.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/st_whatsinside_inkjet/
And yes, I did note that these were dye carts, not pigments.
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Why are carts opaque?
Probably so you can't see how much of the Epson $3,274.88 per gallon ink is left.