Broke my new C88

[websnail]

Sounds good to me... just be sure you don't plug it back in until it's 100% bone dry again... which if your weather is anything like the UK right now, shouldn't be a problem

I suspect you're right though.. re-reading the issues it sounds a lot like the cartridge(s) had some kind of leak that was allowing air to flow in and the the ink to just free flow out. That would explain the park pad being soaked and also I'd guess the carriage movement would act like a sprayer, hosing down the rest of the unit...

I'd go with Miklings suggestion though in all honesty, you get a chance to resurrect it and if you wait a few days for it to be dry you shouldn't hit any problems.



As to the MIS cartridges, I'd contact Robert at, yes Gemini.. and explain what's been happening and I reckon he might be able to help with some of the same cartridges but a little cheaper. Your call but it's worth a shot... Mention Martin from WebSnail.net sent you and he'll know who to blame

The only this I'd note with those cartridges is that it's worth stretching some electrical tape over the filler hole and plug to ensure the plug doesn't pop off and create the problem you've hit.


Can't help but feel your pain though...

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

I would contact Gemini if they weren't out of the country, thus making each phone call worth the price of a printer. (I'm going to need VOIP sooner or later). Rather than deal with an ink soaked printer, I offered it to someone nearby who was trying the print-on-PCB thing, he gave me about 1/3 the price for it so I'm not too far in the red now. I wound up getting a C88+, the only difference I've seen so far is that the endcaps have black plexi on them.

I gave in and ordered four carts from MIS - since the cost of the ink /and/ carts from InkJetCarts was cheaper than four auto-reset chips without the cartridges from MIS, I figured I had nothing to lose.

They came today. They look /much/ different than the InkJetCarts ones (that had two colored rubber plugs for fill and air), having a silicone stopper and a tiny air vent with small sponge instead. I bottom primed them and installed (The small sponge in the vent port soaked up the black ink really quickly, but not the colors...). I could /hear/ the carts making a good seal with the printhead, and so far, it's working quite well. The ink is quite waterproof, considering it's aftermarket, I'm surprised. I just have one question now: The Cyan ink is blue. RGB blue. Is it /supposed/ to be like this? Since I didn't do many prints with the C88 with OEM ink, I don't remember how dark that was. Magenta and Yellow are both quite intensely bright, but the dark cyan absolutely murdered my color gamut. My HP 4-color had much, much brighter blues than this, but it was a dyebased color. Is the aftermarket ink I got not gamut-compatible, or is pigment cyan just very dark?

It doesn't matter too much to me, as this is strictly a text printer, but I may eventually order another blank cart and different refill ink if it's not supposed to be this dark. I'll scan a print of it tonight or tomorrow, I have to get back to work right now.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

Two more questions: I noticed that the black ink has gone all the way up into the vent area, while the color ink has not. Is it /supposed/ to do this (and the sponge is just there to keep the air from getting in too fast)?

Second, what's the best way to refill the cartridges without making the printer go through a purge cycle. Just pulling them out and putting them back in, even though they only reset to 95%, seems to make the printer waste ink. I'm kind of wary of filling them while in the printer, but the C88 series printers seem to use a /huge/ amount of ink per purge.

 

[websnail]

On the Cyan -> Blue issue it's occured to me that you're right, the ink does appear very "blue" in appearance and whilst I'm not really one for checking colours I noticed the intensity of the colours in general is slightly lower on the pigment inks which is what you'll have from MIS with their MIS Pro inks... The prints I've done to date haven't suffered though and just for the record I have the same inks from MIS and Gemini with no difference.

Oh and the inks for the C88 are pigmented Ultrachrome type which is, as you noticed, waterfast... Of course that means you gotta watch out for it drying out through lack of use :|


Given that you bottom filled that probably forced a small amount of ink into the sponge... and I've got a couple of cleaning cartridges where that's happened after a few weeks but it shouldn't go any further, so I wouldn't worry about that... Of course if you get ink rising up and out of the vent hole you've got a problem but that's unlikely


As to the last question re: refilling... I've never tried refilling in situ but chances are you can get away with it so long as you take it gently and allow air to escape out the fill hole as you inject ink in. Perhaps you could experiment using the bottom fill adaptor to hold the spiggot valve in the cart exit port open and try refilling like that to see if there's any drippage or leakage to be sure.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

The Auto-Reset chips I have don't work too well with the C88+ (They don't reset until 0%, and reset to 100%, while I could have sworn it was 20%/95% on the C88), so I took the chips from the genuine Epson cartridges instead, and got a $10 resetter from Staples. Unfortunately, the black chip seems to have gotten screwed up. Is there any way to fix this? If not, does anyone have a spare black chip for the T060x series cartridge?

 

[mikling]

I did mention to stick with the original Epsons and just refill them and reset them. Now you're nearly back to the beginning. If you have to remove a cartridge to reset, you might as well refill. This ensures the level indicators are correct and the printer doesn't flush too much. I went down that path before.

Make sure the contacts are clean.