Epson 3880...Don't make my mistake

[pluton]

Unfortunately, the 3880 won't execute a basic cleaning while any ink cartridge is showing a low ink warning.
I swapped in two new cartridges, did the cleaning, and everything is fine.
My mistake is that I forgot(or never knew) that I could swap the original low cartridges back in, in order to not waste the remaining ink contained therein.
Having forgotten about swapping back in, I sawed open the "low ink" cartridges to see how much ink remained.
There was about 15ml in one, and about 20ml in the other cartridge.  Ouch.

[Mark D Segal]

It is necessary for technical reasons - to protect the integrity of the print head - that some ink be left in the cartridge even after the printer firmware tells you it is empty. Not knowing how much ink that is supposed to be, hard to say whether you lost much by what you did, but likely not much. I am - I believe reliably - informed that the ink fill quoted on the cartridge is the amount you can actually use for printing before needing to replace it, so the amount remaining when it is said to be "empty" is over and above that. If you are printing on high quality paper, ink is much the lower portion of the recurrent cost of making prints.

[howardm]

Yes, when I had a 3800 which tended to clog, I was constantly playing musical cart's w/ fairly low carts and new carts in order to get the cleaning cycle completed and then moved back in the old/low carts to get the most out of them.

[digitaldog]

Mark is spot on. There has to be sufficient ink (or prior to arrival to you, a shipping fluid) at all times in the lines and ink heads. Folks who complain about a small amount of ink left in 'empty' cartridges would rather ignore this and make up ink conspiracy theories about Epson but the facts are, dry heads become dead heads.

[dgberg]

And.. low only really means time to order a spare if you do not have one on hand.
Have printed 50 prints or more with multiple low warnings.

[digitaldog]

And.. low only really means time to order a spare if you do not have one on hand.
Have printed 50 prints or more with multiple low warnings.

Exactly! I never replace the cartridges until the printer stops printing. Pop in a new cart, it starts up where it left off without any negative results (there's still ink in the lines).

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Exactly! I never replace the cartridges until the printer stops printing. Pop in a new cart, it starts up where it left off without any negative results (there's still ink in the lines).

I've even had an ink run out in the middle of a print at start of a three-day weekend when I couldn't get a replacement cart for three days. When I popped the new cart in, the printer started printing and I could never tell where the old cart ran out and the new one began.

Now I generally keep at least one spare for each ink.

[pluton]

Exactly! I never replace the cartridges until the printer stops printing. Pop in a new cart, it starts up where it left off without any negative results (there's still ink in the lines).

Exactly as I usually do...except, if you got a nozzle clog, you're not going to continue printing until you get it cleaned.

[Mark D Segal]

Exactly as I usually do...except, if you got a nozzle clog, you're not going to continue printing until you get it cleaned.

This is a non-issue. If the cartridge does not have enough ink to allow the cleaning, you replace the cartridge, do the cleaning, then swap back in the old one till the printer LED tells you it's exhausted, then swap back in the new one.