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Author Topic: What does it really cost to make a print at home?  (Read 7637 times)

Mark D Segal

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #20 on: December 30, 2015, 09:53:26 pm »

What you saw registered isn't necessarily an exact amount. The printer firmware knows whether there is sufficient ink to safely make the swap. Epson always maintains a safety margin of ink in the tank over and above its stated capacity to protect the print-head from the risk of air infiltration. Whenever you run into a "not enough ink" situation at a time when you need to clean the print head or make an ink swap, the simple solution is to swap out the cartridge that is almost empty for a new one, do what you need to do and then replace the old one till it is exhausted. This is a very well known approach which Epson even recommends to prevent people from prematurely disposing of their remaining ink. The cost of an ink switch is the number of ml for the switch times your price per ml. Not more, not less.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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MHMG

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #21 on: December 30, 2015, 10:40:18 pm »

What you saw registered isn't necessarily an exact amount. The printer firmware knows whether there is sufficient ink to safely make the swap. Epson always maintains a safety margin of ink in the tank over and above its stated capacity to protect the print-head from the risk of air infiltration. Whenever you run into a "not enough ink" situation at a time when you need to clean the print head or make an ink swap, the simple solution is to swap out the cartridge that is almost empty for a new one, do what you need to do and then replace the old one till it is exhausted. This is a very well known approach which Epson even recommends to prevent people from prematurely disposing of their remaining ink. The cost of an ink switch is the number of ml for the switch times your price per ml. Not more, not less.

I disagree. At best the swap old, put in new, swap new, put in old approach is an incredible PITA which also waste inks as the printer recharges the ink lines, and at worst it may lead to air bubbles in the system that will require additional cleaning cycles. Moreover, after producing well over 30 some 8x10 equivalent sized prints and still not out of the original ink in all four cartridges that registered low at the time I wanted to switch, and recognizing in my amortization study that the inks don't stay in synchronized harmony of fill levels very long, we are discussing a very high probability that the P600 simply won't be ready to make the black ink switch effortlessly when you are unless you are willing to waste more money or more manual labor than Epson would have you believe.  This practical problem is simply glossed over in the Epson printer specifications that seem to indicate the only issue is a mere loss of a few ml of ink during the switching cycle.  It's a clever under reporting of the truth, and none of the Epson facilitated reviews of this printer that I have read to date appear to acknowledge this reality. Perhaps the reviewers simply didn't spend enough time with the printer to even realize the issue exists.  The practical solution for serious printmakers who want the superior B&W print quality in the P600 compared to the P400, IMHO, is to buy two P600 units and dedicate one to PK and one to MK... I have no allegiance to Epson, Canon, HP, or any other manufacturer. They don't loan or give me free stuff to test and I wouldn't accept if they offered. I call it as I see it.

best,
Mark
« Last Edit: December 30, 2015, 10:57:32 pm by MHMG »
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adias

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #22 on: December 30, 2015, 10:57:58 pm »

You'll only notice it as the printer taking a far longer time to start up and ready than usual. I never print with MK on my 3880 (other printers do MK work) and it's already consumed a third of the MK cart over two years. My understanding is that it does this to make sure there's at least some fresh/non-stagnant MK ink in the MK line and that you can change over in the future, if you decide to.

I don't know if doing a manual MK/PK change resets the timer on this, but I do know that the printer will do it on a six month schedule if you don't do manual switches.

I NEVER print on matte paper. I have no use for MK. Why pay for one and have it idling and ink cycling for nothing? What happens to the ink drained on ink sponges after a while? Not a good thing. This is another reason why I decided to skip the current inkjet printer generation and try a calibrated printing service for a while.
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Wayne Fox

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #23 on: December 31, 2015, 12:16:11 am »

I'm sure the P-series printers also do this, but the 3880 does a MK/PK switch every six months, regardless of whether or not you want to. So even if you never use MK ink, it will consume ink as it switches from MK and back.
  I have a 5 year old 9900, and I'm not aware of the machine ever doing it.  I did run some MK stuff several years ago, which left my MK ink very low.

So either the 9900 doesn't do this, or you can prevent it from happening by keeping a MK cartridge in the machine which is low enough in ink the machine can't make the switch.  I'm moving the machine to my store soon, maybe after I do I 'll see if there's enough ink to make the switch (if so the machine doesn't trigger one automatically, if not then either it doesn't trigger one, or keeping a low ink cartridge prevents it ... I guess that sort of makes sense :) )

If you never make the switch, the problem might be the MK drying up to the point of being  unusable - never really thought of that.  but I don't like matt papers so never really worried about it.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #24 on: December 31, 2015, 07:22:13 am »

I disagree. ............. I call it as I see it.

best,
Mark

That's fine, good for you.

I can't relate to just about every statement in that post, so we'll agree to disagree.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #25 on: December 31, 2015, 07:39:02 am »

Well, I had four cartridges registering about 5% left when the P600 refused to make the swap due to "low ink cartrdridge" Only one low cartridge of any color is required for the P600 to refuse the PK/MK ink swap. 
Is this a new "feature?"  I have a 3880 and regularly print on both matte and glossy paper.  I've never noticed (I'm pretty sure) that the printer has failed to switch with low ink warnings showing.
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Dan Vincent

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #26 on: December 31, 2015, 10:05:46 am »

If you ever get back to home town, please give me a call and let's get together.

I was just in town for Christmas, so it may be a few months. But that sounds like an excellent offer.

Quote
My P600 has now been in operation since April 2015, and I pay close attention to its print cycles in order to identify an autoclean cycles. I have not yet noticed an auto ink switch. I did deliberately switch just once from PK to MK and then soon back to PK in order to print a few light fade test samples early on in May, 2015,  so the printer has now been in PK ink mode for several months. MK is still registering full. Hence, if the P600 is programmed to do an automatic ink swap occasionally, it's a very low frequency indeed, and not cause for much concern since it doesn't affect the economics of ownership in any significant way. User requested deliberate ink swap decisions are another matter, and cause for concern for anyone who likes to print regularly on both matte and glossy media.  In that situation, one would be best served by purchasing the SC P400 instead of the P600 or, sad to say, buying two P600 units in order to dedicate one to Matte papers and one to gloss/luster papers.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

This is good to know; perhaps the P-series are less aggressive about this. As I said, I never run MK on this particular printer, but I do notice when it does the scheduled ink switch; the machine takes an extra five minutes to start up. I have the automatic ink switch turned off in the menu (I have to manually change it to MK in case I accidentally pick the wrong paper type). The new reformulations of the black inks may also have something to do with it (less prone to clogging the switch mechanism?), but I do not know.

My P-7000 Commercial was just installed a month ago, so I cannot say how the new wide formats behave. I cannot recall if the 7900 did a scheduled black switchover because I ran MK jobs on that machine every few months. I will be running MK jobs on the P-7000 and one thing I noticed is that it consumes a lot more ink during a switch than the 7900 did. I have 700mL carts in that thing so it's a drop in the bucket, but still something I noticed.

MHMG

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #27 on: December 31, 2015, 01:29:47 pm »

Is this a new "feature?"  I have a 3880 and regularly print on both matte and glossy paper.  I've never noticed (I'm pretty sure) that the printer has failed to switch with low ink warnings showing.

I have never encountered the issue before on my 3880 either, and as i noted earlier, I don't have a P800, so I cannot confirm whether the P800 with its bigger volume cartridges will negotiate the low ink status PK/MK swap differently than the P600 with its much smaller cartridges, but here is a shot that shows the P600's low ink warning "feature". The image showing the yellow triangle (very low ink) on the yellow cartridge was recorded with an iphone right off the LCD panel of the P600 printer,and also shows the warning you get when trying to switch black inks.  Note in this very current photo of my P600's status that both PK an MK are quite full, thus proving that any low cartridge not just a low PK or MK can trigger the P600's refusal to make the Black ink swap.

The other two attached images are screen shots of the utility panel you can check on your computer. In one image you can see that four inks are low including the PK ink, but none have posted that yellow triangle warning yet, and in the other screenshot the low PK ink was replaced (but didn't solve the switch refusal) while the cyan cartridge had next reached the yellow triangle low warning. What this all means is that there are actually two "low" levels, the really low level where a cartridge shows a yellow triangle warning and another lesser low level that still has enough ink not to trigger the triangle warning but still too low to allow the swap. Lastly, it can be seen in these photos that the cartridges really don't stay in syncronization, so just about the time you get one replaced another is now heading into that low zone which is going to negate the opportunity to make a black ink switch.

While I may try to study this whole low ink cartridge temporary removal and then replace strategy as a way to circumvent the ink swap refusal when you only own one printer, I don't have high confidence that constant swap outs and set asides of opened ink cartridges is a very good idea. But it's worth understanding as a possible work around to the black ink swap conundrum, so I will probably give it a try.

To me, if you are a serious printmaker who wants very best image quality in smaller sized prints, The P600's 5760dpi setting does deliver subtle yet noticeably superior image detail compared to 2880 dpi, albeit at significantly slower print speed. Hence, even if I owned a P800, I'd still be tempted to have the P600 in my studio as well. Thus, the ideal situation if you want to print regularly on both matt and glossy media and if room space isn't a problem, is to own two of them, one dedicated to PK and another dedicated to MK. Another advantage of that approach is one can swap the mostly still full PK and MK cartridges periodically and directly between the two printers (ie. not have them lying around outside the printer), thus effectively managing any potential concerns about shelf life of the lesser used black ink in each printer.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
« Last Edit: December 31, 2015, 05:22:39 pm by MHMG »
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Wayne Fox

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #28 on: December 31, 2015, 03:24:08 pm »

regarding not swapping if other colors are too low, I know on the larger printers, you have to have enough LK ink because it is consumed in the swap as well. Not sure about the smaller printers, but guessing some other inks are used in a swap, I don’t think they can clean out just the pk/mk line.  Also in the larger printers an ink swap triggers an auto nozzle check and clean if necessary.  So it could be the printer won’t swap if there isn’t enough ink for a clean, even if there is enough black ink for a swap.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: What does it really cost to make a print at home?
« Reply #29 on: December 31, 2015, 04:37:42 pm »

regarding not swapping if other colors are too low, I know on the larger printers, you have to have enough LK ink because it is consumed in the swap as well. Not sure about the smaller printers, but guessing some other inks are used in a swap, I don’t think they can clean out just the pk/mk line.  Also in the larger printers an ink swap triggers an auto nozzle check and clean if necessary.  So it could be the printer won’t swap if there isn’t enough ink for a clean, even if there is enough black ink for a swap.

In the 4900 the whole swap is between MK and PK and it happens via a small switch in the damper which allows through either the one ink or the other - like a switch between tram tracks going in divergent directions. No other inks are involved with this. I've seen actually how this mechanism works.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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