Epson Ink Skinflintery

[howardm]

So basically, they have figured out how to maximally throw ink into the maint. cartridge or buy a second printer that is running only MK.  They win either way. 

[MHMG]

So basically, they have figured out how to maximally throw ink into the maint. cartridge or buy a second printer that is running only MK.  They win either way. 

I think the ink expended on printhead maintenance is a fundamental nature of inkjet printing technology.  I'm Ok with that.  However, I'm not OK with the disingenuous part of this process wherein the printer manufacturers hide the maintenance issues behind a bunch of marketing hyperbole, for example, citing cartridge capacities and expected page counts per set of cartridges that don't honestly reflect how much ink will actually hit the print paper versus going into the waste tank, or what print yield variations the enduser should expect between frequent usage of the printer versus low frequency usage of the printer.  Considerably more ink will get wasted trying to get a low use printer back into a "print ready" state compared to a printer used almost daily.  Whether the necessary maintenance efforts get handled manually with nozzle checks and subsequent manually induced cleaning cycles by the enduser, or whether the cleanings will be handled preemptively by stealth head cleaning cycles that waste a lot of ink without the enduser being fully informed is where many endusers get blindsided, IMHO, on total cost of ownership.

It would be like owning a car that the manufacturer claims you will always get 50 mpg, and you can indeed get 50 mpg if you drive it every day, but it will only get you 5 mpg if you only drive it once a week.

[deanwork]

I don't know how HP does it but when the Z carts show empty they are TOTALLY EMPTY. You can break open the carts and they are dry. Their ink monitoring software is also very accurate ( unlike Canons that is fairly crude and misleading ).

 Of course like Canon the carts are facing down on the Z series and easily drain out the last drop. But it is also true that the Canon large format machines use a lot more ink in keeping the ink flowing than does HP. I don't know why, they are both thermal head technology. The real evidence of this is in the amount of ink that accumulates in the HP waste tank vs Canon or Epson. It takes years and years for the waste tank to fill up on the HPZ, if ever. So it is possible to make a good large format inkjet printer that doesn't waste ink in the process. The old Epson 10K was the same way and they were big well designed piezo heads. I don't know how they did that either but they did. Never had to empty the waste tank in 10 years of significant use and never did nozzle checks, and that was their very FIRST pigment inkjet printer.

john

I think the ink expended on printhead maintenance is a fundamental nature of inkjet printing technology.  I'm Ok with that.  However, I'm not OK with the disingenuous part of this process wherein the printer manufacturers hide the maintenance issues behind a bunch of marketing hyperbole, for example, citing cartridge capacities and expected page counts per set of cartridges that don't honestly reflect how much ink will actually hit the print paper versus going into the waste tank, or what print yield variations the enduser should expect between frequent usage of the printer versus low frequency usage of the printer.  Considerably more ink will get wasted trying to get a low use printer back into a "print ready" state compared to a printer used almost daily.  Whether the necessary maintenance efforts get handled manually with nozzle checks and subsequent manually induced cleaning cycles by the enduser, or whether the cleanings will be handled preemptively by stealth head cleaning cycles that waste a lot of ink without the enduser being fully informed is where many endusers get blindsided, IMHO, on total cost of ownership.

It would be like owning a car that the manufacturer claims you will always get 50 mpg, and you can indeed get 50 mpg if you drive it every day, but it will only get you 5 mpg if you only drive it once a week.

[howardm]

And here I am with my 'inventory' of 3 spare maint. carts. :/

[GrahamBy]

In defense of Epson, the amount of ink used to charge the system, is still ink you will use.

Is it? The day your printer finally dies and you take it to the recycling centre, it will still have lines full of ink, won't it? So in fact that ink can never be used, unless at some point you can over-ride the system that stops printing when the cartridge is empty and so drain out the line as well.