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Author Topic: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart  (Read 3800 times)

traderjay

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Finally had the time to open one up and see the internal construction of this sucker. I am glad Canon decided to seal this thing shut using either glue or laser welding because it will be a HUGE mess of epic proportion should it leak.

Skip to timestamp 3:00 if you do not want to see the entire opening process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ycBTsqE1Us&feature=youtu.be
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Peter McLennan

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My Epson 9800 maintenance tanks pry apart with a screwdriver.  They, too are loaded with ink.  Ink that's endlessly, continuously pumped overboard, lining the pockets of Epson/Seiko shareholders worldwide.  Good thing I could re-use the tanks AND the refillable carts.

My new HP 3200 has no maintenance tanks at all.  And it makes better prints.  Go figure.
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Wayne Fox

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My new HP 3200 has no maintenance tanks at all.
Doesn't HP call it a spittoon? At least I always thought it served a similar purpose to a maintenance tank.
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mearussi

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I guess this is the price for keeping your head from plugging.
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traderjay

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I guess this is the price for keeping your head from plugging.

This was the first maintenance cart and contains all the packing fluid that came shipped with the printer.
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DougDolde

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My HP Z5200 doesn't have one either. It's very economical to operate ink wise. I spend much more on canvas than inks
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dgberg

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Thank god for my Epsons
Pop it apart with a screwdriver, dispose of the pads, rinse with water, reinstall new pads and snap on the cover.
Reset the chip and good to go for another year.
Cost, maybe a buck or two for pads.
Cost of ink lost approximately 500ml @ .05 per ml refillable OEM ink $25.00
Epson K3 OEM inks purchased from all over the country for .05 per ml.
Since we started purchasing and refilling ink for our 4 K3 supplied Epsons our ink outlay has gone from over $5,000 per year to just around $500.
Many ways to save on printing overhead costs, ink and maintenance tanks are only a few.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2017, 06:34:10 pm by Dan Berg »
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Peter McLennan

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Thank god for my Epsons


I must admit, I wish my 9800 was still functional. Like Dan, once I invested in re-fillable carts, the cost of printing dropped precipitously.  The HP makes better images, though.
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kers

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Doesn't HP call it a spittoon? At least I always thought it served a similar purpose to a maintenance tank.

yes it spills, but not that much
still have not reached the level of maintenance after 10 years use- but i am not a heavy user...
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Pieter Kers
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mearussi

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I must admit, I wish my 9800 was still functional. Like Dan, once I invested in re-fillable carts, the cost of printing dropped precipitously.  The HP makes better images, though.
The x800 series were the workhorses of the Epson line. They don't make them that tough anymore unfortunately, though hopefully the new P series will prove to at least be better than the horrible x900s.
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DtEW

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2017, 09:41:16 pm »

The maintenance cartridges of the prior generation iPF5x00/6xx0/8x00 printers could be disassembled with a couple of Phillips screws, which allowed the pads to be hand-washed and dried on a stationary rack of a typical clothes dryer.  And their counter chips can be reset to empty using the service mode if the cartridge did not go below 20% capacity... altogether getting you a functionally-new cartridge.

I don't know if it's more environmentally-friendly to bury a plastic cartridge filled with absorbent media and ink and hoping waiting for it to decompose in a thousand years... vs. washing encapsulated ink down the sink with lots of water into our sewage treatment system.   Intuition favors the latter... but I fully admit that these things are tricky.

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deanwork

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #11 on: November 14, 2017, 09:55:45 pm »

Yes the HP Z series has a large maintenance tank on the right side that they call a spittoon. When the heads do deposit any ink during cleaning there is a trap door where the ink goes into that tank. My Z3100 is 10 years old and when the tech went in there 8 months ago and replaced the spectro sensor that I ordered from China for $300.00 he talked me into replacing the spittoon at that time . I said why not maybe I'll get another 10 years out of it. When we took it out it wasn't nearly full. I had used that printer nearly everyday for a decade. Now my Canon fills its waste tank about twice a year when used frequently . But when you go to replace a head on the Canon you always need a fresh waste tank because then it fills up fast. I had an Epson 10k that was used everyday for 10 years including major purges and initial fills when changing various kinds of monochrome inksets in it and guess what, it never filled up. It was a big one. Course you rarely had to do a head cleaning on that machine. Those were great heads.


Doesn't HP call it a spittoon? At least I always thought it served a similar purpose to a maintenance tank.
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Wayne Fox

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2017, 01:45:03 am »

My HP Z5200 doesn't have one either. It's very economical to operate ink wise. I spend much more on canvas than inks
That's not exclusive to HP. Media costs dramatically exceed ink costs on all 3 brands.  Not even close.

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Wayne Fox

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2017, 01:48:51 am »

I don't know if it's more environmentally-friendly to bury a plastic cartridge filled with absorbent media and ink and hoping waiting for it to decompose in a thousand years... vs. washing encapsulated ink down the sink with lots of water into our sewage treatment system.   Intuition favors the latter... but I fully admit that these things are tricky.
Not sure about your intuition, but other than human waste or food ground up in a disposal or similar type things that sewer treatment plants are engineered to handle, nothing else should be washed down a sink.
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dgberg

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2017, 04:16:56 am »

That's not exclusive to HP. Media costs dramatically exceed ink costs on all 3 brands.  Not even close.

Agree 100%
Our refillable  ink costs are around .05 a sq. ft. and canvas runs about $1.06 a ft.
In the past our non refillable OEM ink cart  cost was about .56 + per ft.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2017, 04:21:39 am by Dan Berg »
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GrahamBy

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #15 on: November 15, 2017, 04:23:17 am »

Thank god for my Epsons
Pop it apart with a screwdriver, dispose of the pads, rinse with water, reinstall new pads and snap on the cover.

That's not the point.

The tank is cheap, around 20€... it's the 500€ of wased ink inside that hurts.
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deanwork

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #16 on: November 15, 2017, 08:58:16 am »

Same thing with the Canons and you don't even need a chip resetting device, you can do it right in the printer maintenance menu, pop it open and fill with cotton. I think I've bought 3 waste tanks in 8 years.

I believe in recycling and also saving money whenever possible. It would be nice if all these brands offered refillable carts and bulk ink . But of course then it would be just one easy step away from using other companies ink. I personally wouldn't use third party color ink because the quality and longevity just isn't there, but a lot of people would use them to save 50% or more  on ink cost. So from a practical point of view I understand why they don't offer bulk ink for the big printers..

John


Thank god for my Epsons
Pop it apart with a screwdriver, dispose of the pads, rinse with water, reinstall new pads and snap on the cover.
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traderjay

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #17 on: November 15, 2017, 11:35:44 am »

Guys - just to be fair this is the fist cart that came with the printer and during the first-time setup, all the packing fluid are dumped inside. So actual ink content in this thing is less than 50%.
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dgberg

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #18 on: November 15, 2017, 11:52:57 am »

Same thing with the Canons and you don't even need a chip resetting device, you can do it right in the printer maintenance menu, pop it open and fill with cotton. I think I've bought 3 waste tanks in 8 years.

I believe in recycling and also saving money whenever possible. It would be nice if all these brands offered refillable carts and bulk ink . But of course then it would be just one easy step away from using other companies ink. I personally wouldn't use third party color ink because the quality and longevity just isn't there, but a lot of people would use them to save 50% or more  on ink cost. So from a practical point of view I understand why they don't offer bulk ink for the big printers..

John


Just to be clear, all I use is OEM ink drained from OEM carts.



Thank god for my Epsons
Pop it apart with a screwdriver, dispose of the pads, rinse with water, reinstall new pads and snap on the cover.

GrahamBy

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Re: The smell of $1000 worth of inks - opening up the Pro 1000 maintenance cart
« Reply #19 on: November 16, 2017, 04:44:16 pm »

Guys - just to be fair this is the fist cart that came with the printer and during the first-time setup, all the packing fluid are dumped inside. So actual ink content in this thing is less than 50%.

I'm sorry to break the news to you: my second maintenance tank lasted about as long as the first, and so far as I'm aware there are no "packing fluids".
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