Epson 7900 ink cartridge exhaustion

[Wayne Fox]

There has been some discussion regarding how much ink might remain in an epson cartridge.

My 7900 began reporting low ink in the LK cartridge I believe when it hit the 10% remaining mark.  I continued to print.  LK ink is consumed much faster than other inks even when printing color prints, so it wasn't long until it hit the 1% remaining mark.  At that point I began tracking actual ink consumption by job from the job sheets (this breaks down the exact amount of each color of ink for each print).

To this point I have used over 10ml of ink printing jobs with the 110ml cartridge reporting 1%. This means the printer was reporting it had about 1ml of ink remaining when in fact it had over 10ml remaining. For colors other the LK this will print quite bit of paper, since the LK is being consumed at rates around 3 to 6 times faster than the other colors when printing full color images.

I don't know if this is similar behavior to the 350 and 700ml cartridges.  However,  if you are using one of the newer professional Epsons that are designed to replace inks in mid print, waiting until the printer stops and insists on a cartridge replacement is worth considering.

[vgogolak]

Wayne

I am the same position; the LK is showing warning but still prints.
On LK, I can understand that this provides a neutral grey base for many non saturated areas. My LK however, was at 20% (while others all were at 50%) right after the initial charging. I wonder why this is? Are there more tubes for LK? does the charging involve dumping of colors?

strange.

Victor

[datro]

On my 7900, the PK cartridge was at 1% for what seemed like months while I was doing a fair amount of B&W printing.  During this time my prints looked fine and my regular Nozzle Check Prints showed no issues with PK.  I finally received a "Cartridge Error" message (not an "empty" message) on the PK cart after powering up one day.  After replacing it, everything continued to work fine.

My conclusion from all this is that the Epson system for tracking ink remaining is not accurate.  In my case, it seems a different section of the firmware "check cartridge" logic found a problem with my empty cartridge before the "check empty cartridge" logic.

Dave

[fjmcsu]

Agree with all above;I did print a massive amount of targets for my profiling & began with 1% on the MK line & cartridge is still not exhausted!

[Wayne Fox]

Wayne

I am the same position; the LK is showing warning but still prints.
On LK, I can understand that this provides a neutral grey base for many non saturated areas. My LK however, was at 20% (while others all were at 50%) right after the initial charging. I wonder why this is? Are there more tubes for LK? does the charging involve dumping of colors?

strange.

Victor

The LK ink shares a channel with the PK/MK inks.  When charging the printer, it will first push through LK and MK.  Once the MK is charged, it will switch to PK in the head, but then has to charge the full PK line.  When doing this it basically charges the LK line a second time.  So once the printer is primed, it will have about 60% remaining in all of the colors but LK, where it will be down to about 38%.

Additionally, anytime you switch from PK to MK it will consume some LK ink as well.

The high usage of LK ink makes it is the most critical and by far the highest consumed ink, so the quickly consumed LK ink is quite conspicuous..  I was  sort of wondering  if the startup procedure could have you leave the LK cartridge out until the MK line is charged so it's just pumping air.  Maybe that messes up the pump if it's running "dry" like that.  Also thought it would be nice if MK/PK shared a channel with a very low consumption color.  (Idle curiosity here - I'm certainly not an engineer and by all mean's it's not a big deal)

I am only running 350ml cartridges in my printer, but I've decided to use the 700ml for the LK.  I'm guessing it will still run out before the other colors. Not complaining, just an observation.  This is all ink that's going on a piece of paper (when needing MK I use my 11880).

Anyway, for anyone buying one of these printers, I recommend you purchase a spare LK cartridge with the printer, because even with color printing LK ink is consumed at 3 to 6 times faster than any other color.

[deanb2010]

I actually had the PK go dry while reporting 1% for a long time.  Burned a lot of ink through the LK trying to get the PK printing again.  Only the LK has ever stopped the printer in mid-stream.  Since the PK incident I leave the cartridges at the 1% reading for awhile then replace them as I don't trust the printer to measure acurately.  

Wayne is right about the LK.  This printer drinks it.  So I bought a 700ml to replace it.  The chip wouldn't read.  I did everything I could think of, and couldn't make it work. So I had to get a 150ML cart because I needed it now. I figure that little screw up by Epson cost me $75 in excess cost. I wasn't happy about that one.

Looking forward to the next firmware release. Epson has a big opportunity to make a lot of little problems go away.

[Farmer]

I was  sort of wondering  if the startup procedure could have you leave the LK cartridge out until the MK line is charged so it's just pumping air.  Maybe that messes up the pump if it's running "dry" like that.  Also thought it would be nice if MK/PK shared a channel with a very low consumption color.  (Idle curiosity here - I'm certainly not an engineer and by all mean's it's not a big deal)

Unfortunately, pumping air would cause issues.  As you're probably aware, the printers ship with a fluid in the lines which is purged when you start them up.  The idea to avoid ever having air in the lines (obviously it can and does happen, but doing it deliberately is not the aim).

At the end of the day, it's a one-off function (unless you run initial charges more than once for some reason) that is not related to any other experience concerning LK usage.

As to sharing with another channel, it's designed so that any cross contamination of inks will have no effect on output - using other colours would not permit that, unfortunately.

That said, feedback about concerns will hopefully lead to design changes in the future as the products continue to improve.

[Doombrain]

Unfortunately, pumping air would cause issues.  As you're probably aware, the printers ship with a fluid in the lines which is purged when you start them up.  The idea to avoid ever having air in the lines (obviously it can and does happen, but doing it deliberately is not the aim).

At the end of the day, it's a one-off function (unless you run initial charges more than once for some reason) that is not related to any other experience concerning LK usage.

As to sharing with another channel, it's designed so that any cross contamination of inks will have no effect on output - using other colours would not permit that, unfortunately.

That said, feedback about concerns will hopefully lead to design changes in the future as the products continue to improve.

they don't ship with fluid in the lines, just the print head and dampers.

[Farmer]

they don't ship with fluid in the lines, just the print head and dampers.

Yeah, they do.  /shrug

[Doombrain]

Yeah, they do.  /shrug

Nope, they don't.

fluid is flushed through the lines to the head. there maybe a small amount of fluid above the dampers