Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: daws on January 13, 2010, 09:41:10 pm
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[blockquote]
Raising a stink over printer ink
Officials who regulate weights and measures for states are preparing for a showdown with manufacturers over how ink cartridges are labeled.[/b]
Los Angeles Times
January 13, 2010
An ounce of filet mignon can cost you $1 at your grocery store -- and the butcher won't hesitate to quote you the price.
But the cost of ink for your computer's printer? It can rival the cost of caviar -- and you won't be able to pin down the price because the companies that make those expensive little cartridges don't want to tell you how much ink they contain.
The price of printer cartridges has long irritated consumers and their advocates, and they say the lack of information from manufacturers only aggravates the situation. One recent study even estimated that consumers could save billions of dollars a year if they were armed with full information about how much it would cost to operate various printers.
Consumer advocates' push for more information has been getting some attention lately, setting up a showdown between regulators and cartridge manufacturers over how the cartridges are labeled.
Manufacturers of printer cartridges say they aren't required to follow laws such as the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, so they usually don't say how much ink is in a cartridge. They prefer instead to estimate how many pages your printer will churn out before you need to replace the cartridge.
That irks consumer advocates, who question why cartridges can cost $30, $40 or more while containing only a fraction of an ounce of ink that, on its own, costs the manufacturer less than $1. In addition, they say, the tests that produce the page-printing estimates have their own problems and inaccuracies. At the very least, adding the ink volume information would be useful for consumers wanting to make comparisons.
Now the National Conference on Weights and Measures, a group of state weights and measures officials, plans to take up the issue at its meeting this month in Nashville, Tenn.
A decision by that body can have effects across the country.
"It's time to sort all of this out," said Max Gray, chief of Florida's Bureau of Weights and Measures, who originally submitted the issue to the national group.
The industry has already told weights and measures officials they can expect a fight. Lexmark International Inc., one company that sells the cartridges, argued in a recent letter that disclosing ink volumes would actually be misleading to consumers.
The cartridges, which Lexmark describes as micro-machines, can use varying amounts of ink based on print quality and the amount of ink deposited on a page, so a comparison based on quantity of ink would be misleading, the company says. And the cost of the ink is only a small part of the cartridges' cost, the letter said.
"Treating these sophisticated machines as though they were mere containers for ink is inappropriate," said Charles Kratzer, an attorney for Lexmark.
The letter goes on to note that for decades, ink, including that in ink cartridges, has been exempted from labeling laws.
But that position was recently rejected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has a unit that helps oversee weights and measures laws. Ink cartridges need a statement of "liquid measure" to comply with regulations, the institute said.
Most printer manufacturers, except Kodak, sell the printers at low cost and then earn big profits on the cartridges. The American Consumer Institute in a study in late 2008 said that consumers were being lured into a bad deal by buying the lower-cost printers and then overpaying an estimated $6 billion per year for the cartridges.
[/blockquote]Full text here (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ink14-2010jan14,0,5483194,print.story).
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I'll compromise. Keep ink cartridges priced where they are now, but give me an Epson 11880 for free.
Anyway, it's the stupid maintenance tank that gets my ire. I should be able to mail it back and get a refund for all the ink contained therein, that's what those guys should be thinking about.
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Anyway, it's the stupid maintenance tank that gets my ire.
Me, too. Throwing away both the ink and the receptacle that contains it is irresponsible for both the consumer and the supplier. I recycle my maintenance tanks, but I have to work hard to beat Epson in order to do it.
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MAINTENANCE TANKS:
I remember reading(maybe it was here?) that the author re-used his maintenance tanks, by removing the foam/absorbent material inside, and replacing it with super-absorbent FEMININE PADS.
so, if you have a wife, or g/f, give it a try .
I haven't done this, but it might be worth reading into though?
-Dan
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MAINTENANCE TANKS:
I remember reading(maybe it was here?) that the author re-used his maintenance tanks, by removing the foam/absorbent material inside, and replacing it with super-absorbent FEMININE PADS.
so, if you have a wife, or g/f, give it a try .
I haven't done this, but it might be worth reading into though?
-Dan
The pad is not the only problem, the tanks are chipped. You'll need a chip resetter as well. These seem to be available for about the price of a new tank.
Alan
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The pad is not the only problem, the tanks are chipped. You'll need a chip resetter as well. These seem to be available for about the price of a new tank.
Alan
there is a way to reset this in the printer
Henrik
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For Wide Formats the price per ml is a lot less. As low as 22 Eurocents ex VAT for the 750 ML carts. For A3 models it can go up to 3x 4x that price. What the article discusses are inks for desktop models that are as expensive as their second cartridge set. You can expect ink pricing like that then. 2 Euro a ML is possible. Caviar is more than 3.50 Euro a gram which probably is about 1 ML too. Highly overpriced to my taste.
However you can get A4 models (office printers) with black carts that cost 42 Eurocents excl VAT per ML, color 1 Euro in smaller carts. All OEM. Remanufactured third party ink carts half the price. The printer about 150 $. With products like printers you have to calculate before buying and not afterwards.
There are wide format models without maintenance tanks that are frugal on ink too. As far as I know the latest Epson model tanks can not be reset yet but reset 9600 tanks can be used in them and the Canon tanks have to be reset in time before they are declared empty. If I recall all this correctly ....... as it isn't my problem.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/ (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/)
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there is a way to reset this in the printer
Henrik
I didn't know that. Do you have a reference to the procedure?
Alan
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The pad is not the only problem, the tanks are chipped. You'll need a chip resetter as well. These seem to be available for about the price of a new tank.
Alan
My chip resetter from www.inksupply.com cost me about $15, if I recall correctly. That's about a third of the price of a new tank. I refill my tanks with cotton balls. Easy to install and remove, but a little messy.
Tanks could be reset from the front panel via a workaround on the Epson 4000. Epson changed the 4800 to prevent this. Nice work, Epson.
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The ISO standard for inkjet printers is pretty useless for our purposes since we are doing photo printing as opposed to printing out letters and documents. I've looked at the Epson site (http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/Landing/InkYieldISO14.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes) where they discuss this issue and it is not informative at all. I think the capacities of the 2880 is about 13 ml and that of the 3880 is about 70 ml so we can do some basic cost calculations. In addition Mark Segal and others have posted information on real life yields. Still one can be sympathetic to more transparency in this area.
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I was in Fry's last weekend with my father-in-law who was interested in a cheap photo printer. There was a Canon rep there and he made a big point of saying that Canon lists the ink volume on their replacement cartridges and Epson does not. So I guess Canon has decided to use this as a marketing point.
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And the cost of the ink is only a small part of the cartridges' cost, the letter said.
Let's see, that would be because of the cost of the electronics put in the cartridges to keep you from using third party inks....
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I was in Fry's last weekend with my father-in-law who was interested in a cheap photo printer. There was a Canon rep there and he made a big point of saying that Canon lists the ink volume on their replacement cartridges and Epson does not. So I guess Canon has decided to use this as a marketing point.
If you want to make the rules tighter and keep ecological aspects controlled too then there are several things to change:
Content in ML on the carts.
Separate carts with a minimum content of 50 ML each to keep packaging/ink ratio sensible.
A 12 hour test period in a 100% humidity lab, printing 200 sheets at best quality and worst quality, standard average photo image, standard average document, power on - power off periods included. Simply measuring by weight where ink is wasted in the printer or in carts that are declared empty + the sheets weight gain. No check on image quality.
Introduction of an ISO ratio quote of wasted ink versus ink that lands on the paper.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/ (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/)
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If you want to make the rules tighter and keep ecological aspects controlled too then there are several things to change:
Introduction of an ISO ratio quote of wasted ink versus ink that lands on the paper.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/ (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/)
OK, here's a data point on wasted ink vs ink that lands on the paper.
I'm a "hobby" user, not a production house. I dont' get paid for my prints.
I use an Epson 4800 and by and large I'm delighted with the quality of images it produces.
I'd better be delighted.
Since my last maintenance tank exchange about six months ago, I've made about 50 letter size and 20 16X20 sized prints and I have done about five "auto" head cleanings due to this infrequent use. Each "auto" head cleaning took about three sheets of paper. I just took the opportunity to compare the weights of the Epson 4800 maintenance tank both empty and full. The printer has pumped 478 grams of ink overboard in an ongoing attempt to keep printing normally.
At 1 gram per ml and $100 per 200 ml cart, that's over $200 in wasted ink. In six months of infrequent use.
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At 1 gram per ml and $100 per 200 ml cart, that's over $200 in wasted ink. In six months of infrequent use.
Hi, Peter,
Yes--I've experienced similar huge wastage with my Epson as well. Should be illegal, as far as I'm concerned. And the nozzle test prints also waste paper too, also to the manufacturer's benefit. *deep breath*
FYI, because I feel ripped off, I've recently switched to Cone pigment inks (http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl;jsessionid=0a0110501f43241e5ad9c3214020b31e92b3aaec99d9.e3eSc3aPaxmLe34Pa38Ta38MaNz0?c=362672&sc=11) and so far, so good. In 1L quantities, they're ~1/3 the price and involve transparent, user-refillable cartridges. I'd like to go for 6 months or more before reporting on them, but so far, I cannot tell the difference in my workflow (using ImagePrint and the same ICC profiles).
My only affiliation with them is as a satisfied customer.
-Brad
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I think there was about 145g of ink in my Epson 3800 waste ink pad when I threw it out. I believe I read somewhere there is about 1.1ml per 1g of the epson ink.
Jon
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Printing equipment has never been so good. I remember back when it cost a fortune to print under the enlargers and that's all we had.
That said the pro-printers, I still thing are pretty cheap to run compared to the past. Sure there are some issue with the printers like the Maintenance Tank.
and a few other things, not delivering a printer to the market with no Papers to support it, not supplying profiles for the printers ect.
I'm surprised that there were so many photographers commenting on how expensive it is, we have never ever been able to make prints of this quality and at this price per square foot.
I have been doing inkjet pigment printing probably before anyone and even then they were inexpensive to run in reality. But what they are currently talking about are to consumer printers which if these companies had half a brain and unite to get everyone to print green and archival inkjet. They would have a bigger market share and save the world from this toxic flow that comes from chemically based papers and the developers, bleach and fixers of the color printing world.
If everyone used these printers and were up front and MARKETED correctly, there market share would be amazing and very profitable without ripping off the consumers. But these short sighted greedy companies should educate the consumers and bring down the price per print and help save our water ways and rivers. But many of these companies are being bought off by the big corporations processing one hour photos. This is the real problem. Bad Bad Marketing to get the change we need.
In this case change would be good. Imagine the whole world making non-fadeable photos and not polluting the planet.
Your constant promoter of the pigment printing process since 1990. Tim Wolcott
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Imagine the whole world making non-fadeable photos and not polluting the planet.
The Cibachrome kits used to include a big bag of sodium bicarbonate which you were supposed to mix in with the soup before you tossed it down the drain. Wasn't anything about being green...it was to keep your drain pipes from dissolving! I sure Type C Blix was/is not much better.
And yes, it certainly is cheaper to make prints now that ever before. When I was printing a lot Ektaprint C prints the costs were up around $4+ per 8x10, which included amortization and upkeep on the $11,000 hard-to-maintain Kreonite 20" wide roll processor and huge amounts of time mixing chemicals, cleaning, running process control strips on the $2,000 MacBeth colorimter, and generally trying to keep everything working. Those are 1976 Dollars. What a drag all that was, I feel so ashamed now to have dissed the maintenance tanks! I ♥ Digital.
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I'm surprised that there were so many photographers commenting on how expensive it is, we have never ever been able to make prints of this quality and at this price per square foot.
Either you are missing the point, or I am. It's not so much about the outrageous prices of ink compared to most liquids, but more so about the extreme lengths (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=40242) one has to go to compare ink prices not only between manufacturers, but between models as well. Manufacturers have done everything in their power to not only obfuscate true price of ink/print, but also trying to prevent the use of alternate inks (which is another topic).
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Actually I am willing to pay today's ink prices...provided the level of quality control remains where it is.
In thinking about the old processes, I remember how hard and time consuming it was dealing with color balance variations between different batches of paper and chemicals. I place no small value on the fact that I don't have to do that with the Epson inks I now use. I can swap every cartridge in my 9880 and still get exactly the same results as before.
It is hard to put a price on whatever the good manufacturer's do to maintain that level of consistency, but it should be worth something. Imagine what it would be like if you had to tweak the color balance of your printing files every time you swapped a cartridge.
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Inconsistency not only wastes ink but media and time.
Consistency is worth a lot and can be achieved without wasting ink.
In that case I do not mind to pay the price.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Dinkla Gallery Canvas Wrap Actions for Photoshop
http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html (http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html)
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Defending high price of modern inks based on the poor performance of inks of days gone by is a weak defense.
I bet you don't use the same metrics to value products in the rest of the camera industry. Early digital cameras were very bad by any standard, yet one can buy a dSLR now which will rival any 35mm film camera for a few hundred euros. Similar progression can be seen in the computer and car industry.
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Defending high price of modern inks based on the poor performance of inks of days gone by is a weak defense.
...made even weaker when manufacturers admit that the ink is only a small part of the cost of the cartridge (meaning most of the cartridge cost is the proprietary electronics whose sole purpose for existence is to make it more difficult for consumers to use 3rd-party inks).
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Whether or not high quality printing has ever been this cheap before misses the point for me, at least.
It's the blatant wastage of my time and money with clogs, nozzle checks which waste about as much media as possible, drain perfectly functional lines when entirely different colors are clogged (with the excuse that individual lines can't be purged--huh?? How is color controlled then, when making a print?), chipping cartridges and maintenance tanks to ensure one must buy only the manufacturer's inks.
As I said before--I think these practices should be illegal. Still, some available alternatives are showing that as cheap as things are today (if you consider $500-$700+ for a full set of inks to be cheap), things could be much cheaper without these wasteful and restrictive practices.
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Whether or not high quality printing has ever been this cheap before misses the point for me, at least.
It's the blatant wastage of my time and money with clogs, nozzle checks which waste about as much media as possible, drain perfectly functional lines when entirely different colors are clogged (with the excuse that individual lines can't be purged--huh?? How is color controlled then, when making a print?), chipping cartridges and maintenance tanks to ensure one must buy only the manufacturer's inks.
As I said before--I think these practices should be illegal. Still, some available alternatives are showing that as cheap as things are today (if you consider $500-$700+ for a full set of inks to be cheap), things could be much cheaper without these wasteful and restrictive practices.
I do not see the waste problems with my Z3100 and Z3200 while their output is very consistent.
That's why I wrote: Consistency is worth a lot and can be achieved without wasting ink.
In my experience compensating the cost of wasted ink with cheaper third party inks degraded the consistency of the printers even more. That was before I bought the HP models.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/ (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/)
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Sooner someone invents a printer that runs on single malt scotch rather than ink, the better. Not only would it be cheaper to run, but the "waste bucket" would be very enjoyable to drink after work.
Graeme
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I do not see the waste problems with my Z3100 and Z3200 while their output is very consistent.
That's why I wrote: Consistency is worth a lot and can be achieved without wasting ink.
In my experience compensating the cost of wasted ink with cheaper third party inks degraded the consistency of the printers even more. That was before I bought the HP models.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/ (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/)
If that happens, then yes, I will be looking at other brands of printer, but so far, consistency has not been an issue for me with the 3rd party inks. But I'll give them a few more months before I have enough experience to be certain of that.
Graeme: Now there's an idea!!
-Brad
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It is hard to put a price on whatever the good manufacturer's do to maintain that level of consistency, but it should be worth something. Imagine what it would be like if you had to tweak the color balance of your printing files every time you swapped a cartridge.
Well, if I had to recalibrate and/or reprofile every time I switched an ink, it would suck. I'd still do it though, rather than tweak the image files. As to how much that is worth, I'd be willing to do it if I was printing more on cheaper papers and could drop my cost for ink to around 1/2.
As it is, with the price of the papers I'm using, I'm rather pleased with the current situation. Ink costs are just not an issue relative to the massive media costs.
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Slightly off-topic, but to me it seems that some are complaining about media costs of maintenance when they should be essentially zero. Surely no one prints head tests on expensive archival fine art paper? I use the cheapest copier paper for those prints. If I have any reason to suspect head clogs (long downtime), I run a test before making a print.
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Sooner someone invents a printer that runs on single malt scotch rather than ink, the better. Not only would it be cheaper to run, but the "waste bucket" would be very enjoyable to drink after work.
Graeme
Perfect! The more you print, the better things look.....
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Thanks for reminding me - I was starting to forget all the reasons I hated my epson printers.
OK, here's a data point on wasted ink vs ink that lands on the paper.
I'm a "hobby" user, not a production house. I dont' get paid for my prints.
I use an Epson 4800 and by and large I'm delighted with the quality of images it produces.
I'd better be delighted.
Since my last maintenance tank exchange about six months ago, I've made about 50 letter size and 20 16X20 sized prints and I have done about five "auto" head cleanings due to this infrequent use. Each "auto" head cleaning took about three sheets of paper. I just took the opportunity to compare the weights of the Epson 4800 maintenance tank both empty and full. The printer has pumped 478 grams of ink overboard in an ongoing attempt to keep printing normally.
At 1 gram per ml and $100 per 200 ml cart, that's over $200 in wasted ink. In six months of infrequent use.
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Slightly off-topic, but to me it seems that some are complaining about media costs of maintenance when they should be essentially zero. Surely no one prints head tests on expensive archival fine art paper? I use the cheapest copier paper for those prints. If I have any reason to suspect head clogs (long downtime), I run a test before making a print.
You're right of course, unless the clog happens mid-print. Not an issue I'd experienced before but on a recent job (all genuine Epson inks), print #3 in a batch job stopped getting light black. I noticed 6 or 8 pages later, didn't have enough media to complete the run (after unclogging) as a result, had to make a run to buy another 25 sheets at $110...
Adding in the time for all this just added insult to injury.
Anyway, yes consistency is key; but so is reliability. I'm glad to hear HP seems to have things in order. Some are saying good things about the latest Epsons too on this issue.
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You're right of course, unless the clog happens mid-print. Not an issue I'd experienced before but on a recent job (all genuine Epson inks), print #3 in a batch job stopped getting light black. I noticed 6 or 8 pages later, didn't have enough media to complete the run (after unclogging) as a result, had to make a run to buy another 25 sheets at $110...
Ouch
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A CIS (continuous inking system) removes much of the pain of high ink costs. I've used several CIS systems for over a decade and the freedom to print big and often is wonderful. I have had zero issues with image fading or non-compatibility with papers, despite the dire consequences others have suggested.
MIS Associates are currently offering free "funnel fill" carts for many common medium format printers. All you need to do is buy a set of inks. (ink which costs a quarter of what Epson charges) This is a heck of a deal. The eight empty carts in my 4800 cost me $400.
Funnel fill carts are preferable to the tank-and-tube systems,IMHO. On my printer, you never even need to remove the carts. When the printer says that the cart is empty, you simply raise the ink lever, count to three and lower the ink lever again, saying to yourself "I just saved $100". This is really fun. The more often you do it, the more fun it is.
www.inksupply.com
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What I am enjoying on the HP z3200 is the accounting feature which measures the ink by individual cartridge and also total used per print. You enter into a table your costs for ink and paper and it keeps a log of how much each print has cost. I'll be able to determine how much ink went onto prints and how much is consumed through cleanings etc. and over time how accurate the ink cartridge volume is. So far this printer has used very little ink in comparison to the epson 7600 and 4000 that I had previously.