Artisan 800 cartridges - cost per page, per photo,

[drames]

I just bought an Artisan 800 for 100 bucks at bestbuy canada --> great deal!

I'm a student working with a nonprofit Orphan Sponsorship Program at my university and we print a lot of stuff. There are a lot of 8.5x11 full colour documents to print out, and I was wondering how much my ink costs would be.

I live near Toronto Canada, so I'm buying from Precision Colors - it saves me the shipping cost, and mikling is extremely knowledgeable.

If there are any other vendors in the Toronto area please let me know.

I just need to know how many 8.5x11 colour flyers I would be able to print out per cartridge so I can calculate the cost per page, per photo --> they are basically full colour photos on multipurpose paper.


I've done some rough measurements and the TO996/TO981/TO993/TO992/TO994/TO995 cartridges are 6 cm X 4 cm X 1 cm.

This turns out to be 24 cubic cm or 24 mL. This of course is an overestimate because of the plastic structure, but I'd rather overestimate the cost per page than underestimate it. If I can figure out how many photos a single set of cartridges can print, then I can calculate the mL used per photo, and the cost per photo.

Paper is about ~1.25 cents per page for multipurpose paper.

How many mL of ink do you think would one 8.5 x 11 full photo document take up?

In other words, how many 8.5 x 11 photos can be printed from one set of vacuum filled refillable cartridge?

Also, how much more ink does Best mode use compared to Standard?

 

[pharmacist]

The actual volume is about 15-16 ml and depending on the pictures you are printing the LM (Light Magenta) and LC (Light Cyan) cartridges will be drained much faster than for example Black or Cyan. The LM for skin's and LC for example the blue skies. I think about 20-25 pages of 8.5x11 before you have to replace the LM or LC cartridge if the entire paper surface is to be covered with ink and if you are printing in photo mode (photo or photo rpm mode) and choosing the photo paper settings (Epson glossy, Premium glossy, Ultra glossy).

 

[drames]

Is it 15-16mL even when vaccuum filled?

 

[pharmacist]

Yes it is and this is the most positive estimation of the total volume. The actual amount is significantly less: priming and cleaning cycles during printing will also drain about 15-20 % of the total ink amount. Piezographic printing like Epson needs a lot of ink just to prime the print head.

 

[drames]

does it help that i always keep on standby, and never turn it off?

 

[pharmacist]

Yes it does help somewhat, but not so much. Why do you not install a CISS with autoreset chips ? The Artisan 800 uses static cartridges and the ink is fed to the printhead with a tubing system, so it should be very easy to install a CISS system.

 

[drames]

I asked around, and you have to grind off a piece of the plastic on the inside or you have to fiddle with the sensor. The sensor is delicate and small, and if I lost it/broke it the printer would be useless.

Also the grinding might seriously void my warranty.

Does a CISS take care of the priming problem?

 

[pharmacist]

No it does not, nor do original cartridges if banding occasionally happens and a cleaning cycle -thus priming- is necessary to remove the clogging. But the automatic priming after installing new cartridges is reduced significantly.

The other alternative is using refillable cartridges. BUT: sooner or later the greatest problem is the waste ink absorption pad below the printer which will be saturated very soon, forcing you to have it professionally exchanged and pay for it and pay for it quite hefty.

 

[drames]

other than ink spilling all over your desk --> does a saturated waste ink pad actually deteriorate the printer/printer head/build quality?

also , i heard its not too hard to get the waste ink pads out, clean them, and reinstall them.

also - I am using refillables from precision colors, surpirinsingly the original inks that came with the epson are still about 1/4 full for cyan,yellow, and light cyan. The black ran out from text and also a big black graphic on the flyer, --> but they included an extra black cartridge so its full again --> and the magenta and light magenta are more than half full.

I printed about 70 coloured text pages with graphics and diagrams on them and about 35 full 8.5 by 11 bordered flyers in best mode and I still have ink! And these aren't even "high capacity" cartridges. So i think its safe to say for just flyers you can get much more than 25 pages of colour out of the cartridges.

I'm paying about $40 for 4oz of all 6 colours from precision colours, and 4oz=~120mL.

If you do the math, 120mL/15mL per cartridge = 8 cartridges worth of ink per 4oz.

Also I'm opting to not use the borderless feature, from what I understand it really spills a lot of ink into the waste pads --> also borderless printing is time consuming if im just printing flyers.

 

[mikling]

You paid $30 for 6x4ozs. Not $40. Also you got a free black CISS line and fitting so that you can add the single line into the 800 without modifying the printer and throwing out your 4 year warranty you paid extra for.
I also spent hours explaining and answering your questions. One of the questions you asked was the extra capacity cartridge issue. On the OEM cartridge, EPSON closes off a compartment that cannot be filled effectively making the cartridge internal volume smaller for the standard capacity. For the extra they leave it open and fill this compartment. The refillables have the similar external volume and has the complete volume available internally.Got it?

Now also understand when dealing with bulk inks or refilling it is not the number of cartridges you consume but ink volume. You are not buying cartridges that you throw out. The 4 oz inks will yield about ten refills.

As soon as you use bulk inks, the cost of ink becomes negligible and actually become a fraction of the cost of media most times.

Do the math and you'll see that a refill costs around 50 cents. Even if you only got a yield of 50 sheets per cartridge, you are still looking at 1 penny per sheet. How much cheaper do you want it??????????? From your questions, you stated you were going to use bond paper with lots of text, so your yield per cartridge will be in the hundreds per cartridge. I already explained that yield will depend on the coverage of the page, what colors are used and the type of paper used. You are still looking at fractions of a penny per page.

You costs will be more on time and paper and other things rather than the cost of ink. Have you not figured that out yet? Moving from a HP cartridge to a bulk refilling paradigm requires a mental reset over the cost of ink.