Observations on Chroma Optimizer (“CO”) Usage Canon Pro-1000 Printer

[MHMG]

I think there are some basic "laws of physics" that apply to all the Canon printer models using this new slngle and rather large print head which can easily account for what appears to be much higher ink waste on the Pro-1000 compared to its bigger siblings, Pro-2000, 4000. First, given that some regular use of ink goes to maintanence on all of these models, the longer you go between print jobs, the more ink ends up never being used to print an image. The boundary condition would be to leave any of these printers idle all the time and never make a print.  In that scenario, all the ink consumed accrues to maintenance, so the ratio of ink to tank versus ink to image goes to 100% maintenance:0% image at this extreme lack of usage boundary. In contrast, printing all day every day and never letting up would push the ratio much closer to 0% waste, 100% accruing to actual images.  However, it has been determined that even during printing, these printers use a little ink for maintenance, so ultimately the high usage boundary condition might end up, for example, at 3% maintenance, 97% image when run in a high production environment. This would apply approximately to the little Pro-1000 model as well, but note what follows in the second paragraph.  A 50:50 ratio thus happens somewhere between these two extreme boundary conditions, and in my own rather low volume of printing, I've also determined 50:50 is a very real world result for my Pro-1000. Seems crazy, but it's real when you only print once or twice a month and the number of prints you make is relatively small.

Now for the second part of the puzzle: Image size!  People with Pro-1000s typically print 8x10s, 11x14s etc, and perhaps a few 16x20s. A single print thus typically requires only enough ink to cover, say, one square foot of image surface area. Yet folks with Pro-2000s, and 4000s, routinely print much larger image sizes, so one print on a Pro-4000, for example, can routinely consume enough ink to cover several square feet image area. Thus, the same print head design with same basic maintenance requirement but mounted on a much bigger printer carriage is bound to produce 5x-10x or more printed image area than the baby brother Pro-1000 when all other low volume enduser usage factors are equal.   Hence, low frequency usage penalizes a PRO-1000 compared to it's bigger siblings simply due to the typical image size being printed.  Larger image sizes act much like higher volume printer usage as far as the print head is concerned. Large images tip ink consumption decidedly in favor of ink to image rather than ink wasted down the tank.

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

[henrikolsen]

Interesting Mark also has a 1:1 (or 50:50) ratio, from low usage though, possibly lower than reported by others.

I can relate to Mark's thoughts on the increased usage with a bigger printer, especially surface area. I have wondered about this before - how working with a roll printer makes me print differently than on a sheet printer - by quite a lot. It's interesting. I have earlier thought it could be the feeling of the "endless" ressources a roll printer seem to make available to you. The speed is much higher (the Pro-1000 is a snail compared to the roll models), you might shift cartridges less often (often much bigger) and the paper is just there in the length you ask for, feeling endless. It somehow just begs to be used, and swiftly spits out anything you ask for, whether big or small - and why not go big then . It's a totally different feeling, and I much prefer the way it seems to liberate me. Might be strange I know, but I can certainly confirm a more loose "trigger button" than when using a sheet model - both in quantity and area size. But a roll model cannot fit everywhere I'd like to.

It would be encouraging if someone had a high usage of a Pro-1000, and could confirm a much improved print-to-waste ratio, but I haven't seen it. If it was a fact, it might change the usage pattern significantly, possibly towards the roll printer feeling I have - although the snail printing and sheet feeding (reminding constantly of the cost in a different way than rolls, to me) makes it less obvious.
Also haven't heard of roll printer Pro-x000 models with very bad print-to-waste ratio, and although less likely than for the Pro-1000, I'm sure at least some don't get used that much. Perhaps they really have the same ratio, usage being the same.

[Mark D Segal]

Mark M-G's first paragraph is a neat, credible explanation of what's going on, but re the second paragraph, I really don't think print size has anything to do with the waste ratio. It doesn't take much printing to keep the head moist, and as long as the printer is left on, the heavy auto-maintenance routine is off. IOW, whether one churns out one 16*20 or four 8*10s in a session, I wouldn't expect the impact on maintenance to differ much if any. The number and spacing of such sessions over a given time period would be the key determinant moving that ratio up or down. The data I posted several days ago reflects a period of intermittent usage every several days, and not making a great many prints per day.

I think a fair bit of this discussion reflects the interest in parts of the community in more fulsome disclosure of ink used for maintenance by both Canon and Epson. They both use lots of ink for maintenance and personally I think it appropriate that owners of these machines should have reliable access to such basic performance data, as it could help improve the efficiency of  printing habits in terms of materials conservation. I think we must accept the fact that with current technology the ink serves two purposes: printing and maintenance. Once we accept this, the volumes consumed for each should not be State Secrets and reporting them should be technically feasible.

[MHMG]

.. I really don't think print size has anything to do with the waste ratio.

How could it not affect this ratio? Let's take the same digital image file. You print it today on a Pro-1000 at 16x 20 size. I print it today on a Pro-4000 at 32x40 size. I just put four times the amount of ink onto print paper as you did which in turn promotes significantly better ink usage with regard to ink hitting paper versus ink arriving at the waste tank. All other print head maintenance factors being comparable (since, after all, our printers have the same print head technology), we can now keep our printers identically turned off or in sleep state for any specific amount of time where upon starting to print again a very similar print head maintenance routine most likely happens. Now rinse and repeat with the same image. You have now printed two copies. I've printed two copies, but again, mine are four times bigger. Comparable ink for maintenance yet much more ink reached paper with the bigger printer.

It's not unreasonable to expect that folks with large format printers routinely print at larger images sizes than people with desktop printers.  Hence, all other considerations being roughly equal, the bigger printer model will waste less ink on maintenance under any given frequency of use scenario... once a day, once a week, once a month, etc. As for total number of image files and/or print copies being made; a small printer is probably going to have trouble keeping up with a big printer on that score as well in typical real world usage scenarios, so once again, the ink efficiency advantage accrues to the bigger printer model based solely on simple economies of scale. No mysterious manufacturer firmware/software differences required

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

[Mark D Segal]

OK, your second para in the previous post could be interpreted differently. If you are just talking about the arithmetic of making larger rather than smaller prints for the same routine, the RATIO of print ink to waste ink is bound to behave the way you suggest. I thought you were trying to argue that there would be absolutely less wasted ink as a function of print size. Clear now. Thanks.

[henrikolsen]

Interesting data showing up at DPR regarding waste. Regular usage (daily) is seeing around 80-100 ml of waste per month. That's a full ink set per year. I still see that as odd. I know there's a cost of ownership and all that, that's not my point or surprise. It's the apparently excessive amount of waste that's getting my eyebrow to raise.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4102045?page=3#forum-post-60205277

[sabin]

63 days without printing with the printer on. No clogging, perfect nozzles check and 3.14gr of ink went to the waste tank as expected.

Then I printed 24 pages A4 borderless using 16.61gr ink, according to Account manager, and 9.32gr ink went to the waste tank.
Ink maintenance and auto head nozzle check are on, which usually wastes about 1-2 grams more, which is fine by me. I say usually because if the printer decides that the print head is dirty the numbers may go higher.  When printing 10x15cm for example, my printer cleans the head every 2nd or 3rd print, but wasting different amount of ink. The cleaning occurs after the chatter sound that is usual 15-20 seconds(if there is no cleaning) before feeding the next sheet. If IM(ink maintenance) and NC (nozzle check) are off, on every 5th or 6th print there is a longer pause, 56-58 sec with cleaning. With NC on the pattern is broken, and cleans are more often (on my printer), but with less ink waste and shorter time. On about 200 sheet a 5 min cleaning will occur even with IM and NC off. So after all my tests I concluded that the maintenance is not so straight forward as I expected. The printer monitors a lot of parameters and sensors and I do not believe that there is a formula that can reflect exact maintenance cost as you cannot predict the printer sensors data. I decided to turn on ink maintenance and auto head nozzle check to maximize print head life as I'm fine with the ink waste when the printer is always on.

Regarding the above discussion my observation is that the bigger the sheets of paper you print on the better the waste ratio. My not very scientific observations are that from borderless 10x15cm to A4 you get about 15-20% less waste per same area and borders. Printing with border reduces very much the ink waste. Printing A3+ with border wasted average of 0.118 gr. of ink per page and A4 borderless wasted average of 0.093 gr per sheet. This is almost the same waste but with more that twice the size!

So as I said the variables are just too much to calculate correctly and that is the main reason different people get different results.

[sabin]

After the good news comes the bad...

Today 3 days later than my previous print I got the 50ml clean! And it's not the CO only, after it 3 of my inks got the exclamation mark!

So the Always_ON suggestion is not working!!! My printer is behind UPS and it was always on.

BTW my previous prints got some ink on the back side of the sheet, obviously something was not clean. Now, 30 Euro later, everything is clean. Also for the next two A4 prints, the printer wasted almost no ink, so it knows it's clean

[sabin]

Here is some usage data from 50ml clean to another 50ml clean and summary of what I have learned so far.

First 50ml clean: 19.5.2017   
Second 50ml clean: 10.10.2017

Printed: 13.395 sq. for 519 sheets mostly borderless. You can calculate average size.
Ink consumed for printing according to Account Manager: 176.495gr

Gone to the maintenance cartridge (MC): 143ml (including only the second 50ml). Note that just measuring the MC difference from first big clean to the next is 111gr, because of the evaporation of ink from the MC. I record MC weight before and after every print so I can sum the difference for the period and it is obvious that in this almost five months 32gr. have evaporated from the MC.

I think this data gives good info about real ink wasted by the Pro-1000 printer when used seldom and left always on.

If you include power off/on cleaning routines however ink wasted will be increased considerately depending of how often you power ON the printer. Here is the table listing the waste on every power on:

On after 0-4h: 0 gr.
On after 4h: 0.11 gr.
On after 5h: 0.15 gr.
On after 6h: 0.9 gr.
On after 24h: 1 gr.
On after 2 days: 2 gr.
On after 4 days or more: 3.2 gr.

If you keep the printer always on you almost always waste ink for the first print and the table looks like this:

Print after 0-6h 0 gr.
Print after 6h 0.9 gr.
Print after 12h 1 gr.
Print after 24h 2 gr.
Print after 2d 2 gr.
Print after 3d or more 3.17 gr.

Ink maintenance and auto nozzle check do not affect the above tables.
In fact I have no idea what Ink maintenance settings does, but I will not be surprised if it is responsible for the 50gr ink dump. The only thing I see happens when it is off is that the inks are rarely agitated. Auto Nozzle check adds some cleaning between prints when the printer thinks it is needed. If you disable it the printer blindly cleans the head on fixed intervals. My printer do not show significant ink wasted when enabled, so I left it on in the end.

So what's next. I will disable again the Nozzle check and ink maintenance and wait after I have printed the same quantity to see if I'm gonna get the 50gr. clean again. Then I will record the statistics again and see where we go from then...

[henrikolsen]

Printed: 13.395 sq. for 519 sheets mostly borderless. You can calculate average size.
Ink consumed for printing according to Account Manager: 176.495gr

Gone to the maintenance cartridge (MC): 143ml (including only the second 50ml).

...

I think this data gives good info about real ink wasted by the Pro-1000 printer when used seldom and left always on.

...

Ink maintenance and auto nozzle check do not affect the above tables.
In fact I have no idea what Ink maintenance settings does, but I will not be surprised if it is responsible for the 50gr ink dump. The only thing I see happens when it is off is that the inks are rarely agitated. Auto Nozzle check adds some cleaning between prints when the printer thinks it is needed. If you disable it the printer blindly cleans the head on fixed intervals. My printer do not show significant ink wasted when enabled, so I left it on in the end.

So what's next. I will disable again the Nozzle check and ink maintenance and wait after I have printed the same quantity to see if I'm gonna get the 50gr. clean again. Then I will record the statistics again and see where we go from then...

Thanks a lot, Sabin. Good data points. Seems again to roughly match the 1:1 seen before (wasting as much ink as is put on paper).

Regarding ink maintenance setting you earlier concluded "This setting is responsible for time related maintenances! After disabling it the printer does not perform the time related ink waste that I described in my previous posts!!" at http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=117644.msg985258#msg985258. Does this new report indicate this was not the case anyhow?

Interesting if the 50gr clean stops with the settings off, or it will always happen. The 50gr clean you got this time, was that happening at or around replacing a full MC, or just came out of nowhere?

[Panagiotis]

Thanks a lot, Sabin. Good data points. Seems again to roughly match the 1:1 seen before (wasting as much ink as is put on paper).

Regarding ink maintenance setting you earlier concluded "This setting is responsible for time related maintenances! After disabling it the printer does not perform the time related ink waste that I described in my previous posts!!" at http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=117644.msg985258#msg985258. Does this new report indicate this was not the case anyhow?

Interesting if the 50gr clean stops with the settings off, or it will always happen. The 50gr clean you got this time, was that happening at or around replacing a full MC, or just came out of nowhere?

The second one I got was on the second maintenance tank, the ink maintenance setting was OFF and happened after 9 days of inactivity with the printer always on. I was about to print a set of photographs and I asked for a nozzle check print. The printer made a long clean. The smell of the ink covered the whole room, three cartridges went to "!" and the maintenance tank bar went from 20% to 60%, then I got my perfect nozzle check print .

[sabin]

Thanks a lot, Sabin. Good data points. Seems again to roughly match the 1:1 seen before (wasting as much ink as is put on paper).

Regarding ink maintenance setting you earlier concluded "This setting is responsible for time related maintenances! After disabling it the printer does not perform the time related ink waste that I described in my previous posts!!" at http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=117644.msg985258#msg985258. Does this new report indicate this was not the case anyhow?

Interesting if the 50gr clean stops with the settings off, or it will always happen. The 50gr clean you got this time, was that happening at or around replacing a full MC, or just came out of nowhere?

Yes, that's what I believed then. The logic of the cleaning routines is not straight forward and the facts mislead me.

The new 56ml to be exact came from nowhere.  I have printed 3 days ago several pages after 60+ days of not using the printer.

1:1 ratio of wasted ink is close enough, but this is only when not using the printer heavily. If you print a lot of stuff every day things will be different. For example if you are not using the printer for 4 days and power it off after use you will have 6.4 grams waste on first page (3.2 for power on and 3.2 for 1st page print). A2 print takes about 2 grams if I remember correctly. So ratio will be 3:1 if this is your usual printing habit. Not to mention the 50gr. that will come some day...
On the other hand the printer uses average of 0.2gr-0.5gr. between prints. So printing A2 sheets with 2gr of ink and 0.5gr waste will give different results. In the end even calculating the waste the printer is worth it for me compared to going somewhere to have your stuff printed. 2-3$ of waste for 1 print a week is less than the transport to a printshop.

[sabin]

Update:

after 73 days and 17h from last print, with the printer always on, I printed a Nozzle check:
3m 15sec - agitating inks
17min clean, request of new MC, then 8min more clean.
Total ink to both maintenance cartridges: 52 grams

Between this and the previous big clean from 10.10.2017 I have printed only 3 A4 sheets on the date of the previous clean.

So printing or not, after about 60 days inactivity with printer ON or OFF we pay the price of 50-60 grams of ink + MC tank.

before clean


after clean

[Panagiotis]

Just for the record. The "Ink Maintenance" setting was On or Off? Thanks.

Update:

after 73 days and 17h from last print, with the printer always on, I printed a Nozzle check:
3m 15sec - agitating inks
17min clean, request of new MC, then 8min more clean.
Total ink to both maintenance cartridges: 52 grams

Between this and the previous big clean from 10.10.2017 I have printed only 3 A4 sheets on the date of the previous clean.

So printing or not, after about 60 days inactivity with printer ON or OFF we pay the price of 50-60 grams of ink + MC tank.

before clean


after clean

[sabin]

Auto nozzle check: 0ff
System cleaning frequency: standard
Ink maintenance: Off

[henrikolsen]

New record in waste/cleaning cycle. Around 90ml! One of those 90ml got on paper. That was after idling for 19 days, printer always on, auto nozzle check off, system cleaning frequency standard, ink maintenance off. First print took 20 minutes including cleaning.

I went from two cartridges with the !-symbol to all 12. Most be the most expensive print I've ever done :\. Have had similar length print pauses before, with a cleaning cycle of something like 3-8ml iirc, but 90...

Notice I didn't weigh the maintenance cartridge this time, but looked at the total ink consumption reported by Accounting Manager. See attachments. I have screendumps of all 12 individual cartridge usages before/after this cleaning as well if interested.

And yes, yes, there are costs involved in running it etc, but the magnitude of costs for this particular printer model still surprises and worries me.

[Panagiotis]

New record in waste/cleaning cycle. Around 90ml! One of those 90ml got on paper. That was after idling for 19 days, printer always on, auto nozzle check off, system cleaning frequency standard, ink maintenance off. First print took 20 minutes including cleaning.

I went from two cartridges with the !-symbol to all 12. Most be the most expensive print I've ever done :\. Have had similar length print pauses before, with a cleaning cycle of something like 3-8ml iirc, but 90...

Notice I didn't weigh the maintenance cartridge this time, but looked at the total ink consumption reported by Accounting Manager. See attachments. I have screendumps of all 12 individual cartridge usages before/after this cleaning as well if interested.

And yes, yes, there are costs involved in running it etc, but the magnitude of costs for this particular printer model still surprises and worries me.

I believe that the total ink consumption figure reported by the Accounting Manager app is inaccurate. I think that was the usual 50-60 ml dump. In any case this is unacceptable IMO. In my case the consumption remains around the 1:1 figure (more or less depending on the usage). Currently I use the same settings as you but I print every second day either a commissioned job or the Qimage unclog pattern (half page).

[loganross]

I mean no disrespect to anyone here. I have been printing for some years. i recently purchased a pro 1000. I do not measure anything, but I also don't have any issues of excess ink consumption (relative to any other printer I have owned).

[Panagiotis]

I mean no disrespect to anyone here. I have been printing for some years. i recently purchased a pro 1000. I do not measure anything, but I also don't have any issues of excess ink consumption (relative to any other printer I have owned).

Please read this same thread from the beginning.

I use a PRO-1000 for 14 months now. I recap here the consumption of my PRO-1000 after the replacement of the third maintenance tank:

Paper consumed 62,626 m² (749.609 ft²).
Total ink on paper 701,656 ml (701.656 ml).
Total ink in the waste tanks ~660 ml (the cost of the wasted ink is around 500 euro).

[loganross]

I fully understand. I just don't understand the ongoing purpose of this exercise. I have owned many photo printers. My pro-1000 cost per page doesn't seem any different than it was for my previous printers. In the end, isn't that what matters? If the printing process requires a certain amount of ink as "run off" , isn't it a case of it is what it is?  Moreover, isn't it possible that either there was a problem with earlier manufacturer dates, or perhaps a specific issue with yours?  It's clear that the maintenance tank fills up quicker than my Epson, but I am not sure if they are the same capacity.  Again, I just want to understand what is the end goal of this thread.  Thank you.

Please read this same thread from the beginning.

I use a PRO-1000 for 14 months now. I recap here the consumption of my PRO-1000 after the replacement of the third maintenance tank:

Paper consumed 62,626 m² (749.609 ft²).
Total ink on paper 701,656 ml (701.656 ml).
Total ink in the waste tanks ~660 ml (the cost of the wasted ink is around 500 euro).