Trigger, if you purchase new Epson cartridges or high quality compatibles filled using a vacuum chamber you are not likely to encounter trapped air bubbles in the foam. OEMs alll use vacuum chamber processes to fill their cartridges for this reason. You will find better professional refillers also using this process. I think fotofreek or ghswellsjr or someone also uses this process for refilling even his Canon cartridges.
On poor quality compatibles, I highly suspect they don't use a vacuum chamber and can sometimes trap air within the sponge.
The 1280 and prior generation were sponge based cartridges. The generation of printers forward of that became spongeless cartridges. My comments about refilling when the cartridges were in the printer are directed at newer printers using spongeless refillable cartridges of a particular design. Some spongeless refillable cartridges will leak out ink as soon as the plug is removed so you will need to check into whether this will or will not occur. You cannot refill spongebased cartridges in situ of the printer. You must remove them and take your chances on the results thereafter.
As to why Epson moved from sponge based cartridges to spongeless I cannot ascertain. However, once it dawns on you how the piezo head works you realize that once it is working perfectly and you have a solid continuous column of ink, you do not want to break that with a large bubble. As an analogy, a siphon can tolerate small air bubbles now and then. However, one sufficiently large will stop the siphon from working and will need to be reprimed. Thsi repriming process is the head cleaning.
As to refilling the Epson sponge cartridge I can tell you of this with 8 years of experience and more than 5 of those were bad years. I got into this when I first acquired my Epson 875DC and acquired a refill kit from MIS. The first refill was good. The second was OK but not as good as the first. The third refill had me concerned about clogging. After that it was downhill. I wasted more ink doing head cleanings than printing. Then I revisited the MIS instructions and they suggested a technique of pulling all the "Epson Foam" out by inserting the syringe and sealing the vents and having continuous draws. Did this work? a little better but I was still plagued by the "eternal clogs". I still didn't get it.
The spiral continued until I wasted so much ink I resorted to IMS refill inks from Costco principally because it was cheap but abhorrent colors but did I say cheap?. Then my Epson problem became worse. In all this time I did not repurchase a new set of cartridges. I insisted that I would refill my own. I did so many head cleanings that in no time I had my lights flashing and I didn't know or cared at that point what the waste ink counter was. I moved onto an HP932....lucky me, you say. Wrong. The HP78 color cartridge was just as bad about refilling. They are tricky. Then I started to spend time on the internet and found about how refill the 78 properly and what it took. I read tons of junk and tried lots of ways. None worked well as they would always give banding etc long before the ink levels were even half down. Then I discovered vacuum refilling and understood how the process works and was that ever a discovery. Suddenly the problems I encountered with my prior Epson all came to light. Those darn tiny bubbles. Then the bottom nozzle plate dropped off my HP78 and I discovered how princely a sum a new one was and went back to a used Epson R200........wanting to get a CISS. I got a poor example of that but that is another story.
At this point, Epson had already abandoned the sponge based cartridges so it didn't matter much to me other than when I got back into Epson printers again with my R200 I was now fully aware of the issues. With the Spongeless cartridges I could get them refilled without air BUT Epson's design made that difficult as they now intentionall designed their cartridges so it could not be refilled with a needle and sponge. Again, combing the internet yielded poor techniques and some were so fundamentally wrong in how you refill the cartridge it was laughable. This only reinforced my belief that you should not believe everything you read on the internet.
Now getting back to the sponge design. I once indicated that the Canon cartridge works with a semblance 3 way equilibrium point. The ink going down the to the printhead is balanced by the force of the ink being pulled up the sponge which is also balanced out by the vacuum within the tank side. It looks like Cannonfodder also bumped into this when he discovered or knew of something similar when he put his CISS tanks on springs thus maintaining that equlibrium through a wide range. In any case, I HYPOTHESIZE that as the foam in the cartridge empties, the equilibrium point on the Epson shifts markedly UNLIKE the canon because Canon has the reserve tank. Early refillables for the Epson were fashioned similar to the Canon cartridge. By having that tank, the equilirium point could be maintained. Without the tank, as the sponge empties, the force that hold the ink up becomes greater. When it is too large, we no longer have the sponge stopping ink from flowing out the head, we now have the opposite. As the sponge dries out or as the ink is used up, the sponge prevents the ink from being fed to the head. Now you smell trouble. You can do a head cleaning, pull the ink down and print some, use up some more ink and then put the printer to rest. Then the sponge ghost appears, he starts pulling ink BACK up into the sponge. The next time you use the printer, if you are lucky, the head gets reprimed. If you are not , you have "clogs".......empty firing chambers. In any case, this might be the first time you read of this and the explanation of the "Epson CLOG".
Oh, guess what? most compatibles are sponge based. So even if they are vacuum refilled, they may have this challenge posed to the fundamental design. Now think about the implications to the Epson clogs on the internet. Think this is not a contributing factor? Well I think so.
I suspect Epson knew this. Well I am assuming here in any case. I am sure that Epson's engineers knew of this issue with sponges and went all out with an attack on designing a good cartridge suited for the piezo head. This as I had displayed earlier on was the result. Actually, the R2200 was earlier and was more complicated, on the next generation they simplified it. ( the one illustrated.) With this design, it looks like the achieved many things. The first was constant level of vacuum to the head from full to empty. Prevention of refilling by needle and syringe ( well I beat them at that) and total sealing of the cartridge upon removal. The chip was put in out of necessity as they needed something that would prevent the printer from using empty cartridges and getting air in the head..ink level indicators was also a gimme here. But the marketers spun it into having the ability to remove cartridges and then remove them with the ink level indicators showing how much ink was left. At first I asked myself, who does that? until you look at the R2200 and the requirement to swap cartridges based on print media and see it was necessary. nevertheless, the marketers even brought this bonus into printers where this was not necessary.
The most significant feature of Epson's new spongeless design though was the constant pressure. Look carefully at the internals and if you are technical enough to understand fluid mechanics you'll see the ingenuity of it.
So to answer your question Trigger about breaking up those bubbles I suspect it would not work. However by all means go and try. Critical to the Epson is the surface tension of the ink as this is what is driving the pump nozzle.
Did Epson put in sponge cartridges to trap people..I don't think so. If anything it hit them as well thus forcing the requirement for a new design........................that traps people...............because it is so refillable they had to stop people somehow.
On the newest Epson cartridges, they put in actual physical ink level detectors to get around the issue that the amount of ink remaining is never quite perfectly predictable but is now with a on off level detector.
On poor quality compatibles, I highly suspect they don't use a vacuum chamber and can sometimes trap air within the sponge.
The 1280 and prior generation were sponge based cartridges. The generation of printers forward of that became spongeless cartridges. My comments about refilling when the cartridges were in the printer are directed at newer printers using spongeless refillable cartridges of a particular design. Some spongeless refillable cartridges will leak out ink as soon as the plug is removed so you will need to check into whether this will or will not occur. You cannot refill spongebased cartridges in situ of the printer. You must remove them and take your chances on the results thereafter.
As to why Epson moved from sponge based cartridges to spongeless I cannot ascertain. However, once it dawns on you how the piezo head works you realize that once it is working perfectly and you have a solid continuous column of ink, you do not want to break that with a large bubble. As an analogy, a siphon can tolerate small air bubbles now and then. However, one sufficiently large will stop the siphon from working and will need to be reprimed. Thsi repriming process is the head cleaning.
As to refilling the Epson sponge cartridge I can tell you of this with 8 years of experience and more than 5 of those were bad years. I got into this when I first acquired my Epson 875DC and acquired a refill kit from MIS. The first refill was good. The second was OK but not as good as the first. The third refill had me concerned about clogging. After that it was downhill. I wasted more ink doing head cleanings than printing. Then I revisited the MIS instructions and they suggested a technique of pulling all the "Epson Foam" out by inserting the syringe and sealing the vents and having continuous draws. Did this work? a little better but I was still plagued by the "eternal clogs". I still didn't get it.
The spiral continued until I wasted so much ink I resorted to IMS refill inks from Costco principally because it was cheap but abhorrent colors but did I say cheap?. Then my Epson problem became worse. In all this time I did not repurchase a new set of cartridges. I insisted that I would refill my own. I did so many head cleanings that in no time I had my lights flashing and I didn't know or cared at that point what the waste ink counter was. I moved onto an HP932....lucky me, you say. Wrong. The HP78 color cartridge was just as bad about refilling. They are tricky. Then I started to spend time on the internet and found about how refill the 78 properly and what it took. I read tons of junk and tried lots of ways. None worked well as they would always give banding etc long before the ink levels were even half down. Then I discovered vacuum refilling and understood how the process works and was that ever a discovery. Suddenly the problems I encountered with my prior Epson all came to light. Those darn tiny bubbles. Then the bottom nozzle plate dropped off my HP78 and I discovered how princely a sum a new one was and went back to a used Epson R200........wanting to get a CISS. I got a poor example of that but that is another story.
At this point, Epson had already abandoned the sponge based cartridges so it didn't matter much to me other than when I got back into Epson printers again with my R200 I was now fully aware of the issues. With the Spongeless cartridges I could get them refilled without air BUT Epson's design made that difficult as they now intentionall designed their cartridges so it could not be refilled with a needle and sponge. Again, combing the internet yielded poor techniques and some were so fundamentally wrong in how you refill the cartridge it was laughable. This only reinforced my belief that you should not believe everything you read on the internet.
Now getting back to the sponge design. I once indicated that the Canon cartridge works with a semblance 3 way equilibrium point. The ink going down the to the printhead is balanced by the force of the ink being pulled up the sponge which is also balanced out by the vacuum within the tank side. It looks like Cannonfodder also bumped into this when he discovered or knew of something similar when he put his CISS tanks on springs thus maintaining that equlibrium through a wide range. In any case, I HYPOTHESIZE that as the foam in the cartridge empties, the equilibrium point on the Epson shifts markedly UNLIKE the canon because Canon has the reserve tank. Early refillables for the Epson were fashioned similar to the Canon cartridge. By having that tank, the equilirium point could be maintained. Without the tank, as the sponge empties, the force that hold the ink up becomes greater. When it is too large, we no longer have the sponge stopping ink from flowing out the head, we now have the opposite. As the sponge dries out or as the ink is used up, the sponge prevents the ink from being fed to the head. Now you smell trouble. You can do a head cleaning, pull the ink down and print some, use up some more ink and then put the printer to rest. Then the sponge ghost appears, he starts pulling ink BACK up into the sponge. The next time you use the printer, if you are lucky, the head gets reprimed. If you are not , you have "clogs".......empty firing chambers. In any case, this might be the first time you read of this and the explanation of the "Epson CLOG".
Oh, guess what? most compatibles are sponge based. So even if they are vacuum refilled, they may have this challenge posed to the fundamental design. Now think about the implications to the Epson clogs on the internet. Think this is not a contributing factor? Well I think so.
I suspect Epson knew this. Well I am assuming here in any case. I am sure that Epson's engineers knew of this issue with sponges and went all out with an attack on designing a good cartridge suited for the piezo head. This as I had displayed earlier on was the result. Actually, the R2200 was earlier and was more complicated, on the next generation they simplified it. ( the one illustrated.) With this design, it looks like the achieved many things. The first was constant level of vacuum to the head from full to empty. Prevention of refilling by needle and syringe ( well I beat them at that) and total sealing of the cartridge upon removal. The chip was put in out of necessity as they needed something that would prevent the printer from using empty cartridges and getting air in the head..ink level indicators was also a gimme here. But the marketers spun it into having the ability to remove cartridges and then remove them with the ink level indicators showing how much ink was left. At first I asked myself, who does that? until you look at the R2200 and the requirement to swap cartridges based on print media and see it was necessary. nevertheless, the marketers even brought this bonus into printers where this was not necessary.
The most significant feature of Epson's new spongeless design though was the constant pressure. Look carefully at the internals and if you are technical enough to understand fluid mechanics you'll see the ingenuity of it.
So to answer your question Trigger about breaking up those bubbles I suspect it would not work. However by all means go and try. Critical to the Epson is the surface tension of the ink as this is what is driving the pump nozzle.
Did Epson put in sponge cartridges to trap people..I don't think so. If anything it hit them as well thus forcing the requirement for a new design........................that traps people...............because it is so refillable they had to stop people somehow.
On the newest Epson cartridges, they put in actual physical ink level detectors to get around the issue that the amount of ink remaining is never quite perfectly predictable but is now with a on off level detector.
