Does anyone sell reliable refillable 1400 carts

Fenrir Enterprises

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I bought a new set of carts for my 1400 last year because my supplier changed their pigment inksets. Since you can't wash out the cartridges, I bought a new set. I had a leave-in set that were connected together that auto-reset. While I wanted this at first, it got annoying because you couldn't reset them at will, so the new set is separate, resettable cartridges. The same ones every supplier on earth sells (photo is from a different website, same stupid carts).

Of course another family emergency plus real work got in the way and I never got around to installing them until today. The PDF I attached is backwards. The first batch of prints I printed looked like page 2. Ink drops all over the paper. Looked inside the printer, a lot of purple ink all over the inside of the printer. There were some separate magenta and cyan swirls, but most of it was mixed quite well into purple.

I figured maybe this all dripped out while I was in the middle of changing cartridges, because it took longer than I thought to get the new ones in there so it was without cartridges for about 5-10 minutes. I took the new carts out and pushed them back in more firmly just to be sure, I thought it was suspicious that they were already 1/3 out of ink after 5 pages printed and one cleaning cycle. I cleaned the inside of the printer and tried again. One clean print. Then I started getting the black smudge in the upper left as seen on page 1 (edit: the black smudge on the upper left of page 1 didn't make it into the scan. It's about 1/16" into the page and about 1/4" long). And the black lines in the yellow. And now the carts are down to 1/4 tank after 5 more pages and one more cleaning cycle.

Is it me? Am I doing something wrong or did I get ANOTHER set of carts that don't seal properly? Is it the carts or is it the printer? Staples is discontinuing the 1430 and I've seen a few on clearance in my area. I haven't even gotten a clean nozzle print yet, the scans I made are Plain Paper: Fine. Plain Paper: Normal has gaps. I haven't even bothered trying photo prints. What I'm mainly curious about when it comes down to it is whether there's a different style of cartridge other than this one Chinese knockoff that every supplier uses. I've had this happen multiple times, I feel like I need to buy 3 sets at a time just to make one good one.

I don't want to waste more ink if the carts are leaking. I don't want to buy another printer if the problem is the cartridges.

"lol throw it out and use canon" isn't helpful. At all.
 

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  • epson 1400 leak.pdf
    1.8 MB · Views: 417
  • DSC_0012-1[1].jpg
    DSC_0012-1[1].jpg
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Ink stained Fingers

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I'm a kind of puzzled about your problems with these cartridges, I have used similar ones for a long time with R265 printers, with CISS, with pigment and dye inks, but o.k., you have the problems , let's go through some questions.
You are right - the 1400/1500W are going to be replaced by a XP-15000 photo printer , everything is new, a new ink set, new cartridges , but whether that model prints better in any respect is another question.
These refill cartridges are all of Far East origin, probably all out of the same factory - or almost.
Which inks did you use before - why would you try to flush the cartridges ? Didn't you have any of the reported problems with the previous ink set ? Or another cartridge set ?
You would be able to flush this type of cartridges, you fill them up with a cleaner/rinse solution , take a syringe and pull the ink from the ink outlet, the outlet is closed with a spring loaded valve which opens when you push the syringe in.
It can get messy, do it over a sink or similar and use gloves.
How does the cleaning unit/parking station look like - is there any left over smear , a pigment ink blob building up ?
Does the purge unit work and does it pump ink - or water for a test - away ? How much are you using the 1400 ?
You may use the WICReset utility to get information via the status report , and status information of the waste ink counter .
 

Fenrir Enterprises

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I'm a kind of puzzled about your problems with these cartridges, I have used similar ones for a long time with R265 printers, with CISS, with pigment and dye inks, but o.k., you have the problems , let's go through some questions.
You are right - the 1400/1500W are going to be replaced by a XP-15000 photo printer , everything is new, a new ink set, new cartridges , but whether that model prints better in any respect is another question.
These refill cartridges are all of Far East origin, probably all out of the same factory - or almost.
Which inks did you use before - why would you try to flush the cartridges ? Didn't you have any of the reported problems with the previous ink set ? Or another cartridge set ?
You would be able to flush this type of cartridges, you fill them up with a cleaner/rinse solution , take a syringe and pull the ink from the ink outlet, the outlet is closed with a spring loaded valve which opens when you push the syringe in.
It can get messy, do it over a sink or similar and use gloves.
How does the cleaning unit/parking station look like - is there any left over smear , a pigment ink blob building up ?
Does the purge unit work and does it pump ink - or water for a test - away ? How much are you using the 1400 ?
You may use the WICReset utility to get information via the status report , and status information of the waste ink counter .
Isn't the 15000 a 4-color printer? The newest 4-color I have from them is a Workforce 1100 and it has a TERRIBLE color gamut compared to HP's 4-color all-pigment printers like the 8600. Cannot do light blue/cyan at all. I suspect this is driver, not just ink issues. It can't print cyan as bright as the actual cyan ink inside it. It can only print shades of dull navy blue, medium to dark. I had the same issue with the C88/C88+. The example photo on the box for the 1100 has it printing an office document with a nice, bright turquoise blue on a chart. It can't actually print that color.
I changed carts because the seller no longer carries the ink that he sold when I bought them. I didn't like the auto-reset carts because if I wanted to print a lot I couldn't reset them all to full anyway. But I don't see how you can rinse the carts. There's no way to dry them out, so the ink is going to be thinned/contaminated by the cleaning solution for several refills.
The purge unit seems to be working OK. I cleaned it off anyway because there was purple ink everywhere.
I haven't printed enough with this printer to be anywhere near time to reset. I have an external waste tank. I use it so little I should probably stop trying.
 

Ink stained Fingers

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the XP-15000 is a new dye ink photo printer including a red and a gray ink and does not fit into the Workforce range.
Auto reset chips are, and have been pretty much standard for the 1400 cartridge type T079x, and I'm not clear why you would try to rinse your cartridges - are you switching from one type of pigment inks to pigment inks of another supplier ?
And those older cartridges are working fine ? I can't imagine there would still be a visible impact of mixed inks after one flushing cycle . Running the 1400 , or other printers with non-genuine inks would require the creation of a icm-color profile and would bring back the cyan. But be aware - cyan on the screen looks different than on paper .
Are the new cartridges leaking ink when you hold them in your hand ? Did any ink from a leaking cartridge leak into the bottom of the printhead carriage ? Are all cartridges leaking ?
 

Fenrir Enterprises

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I don't know if these chips auto reset. The ones I had before were all six carts glued together with a button that supposedly auto-reset them. The button never worked, it would just reset randomly if the cartridges went under 1/4 tank. Not only did this prevent long print runs without being interrupted, it would sometimes set off a cartridge-change purge right in the middle of a print. It also made it hard to see enough to refill the carts in the middle without overflow. The single carts can be reset with a resetter so I can fill them and get them to 100% so it doesn't do that when I don't want it to. The old carts worked fine, but sometimes would still end up with banding/bad nozzle checks even though they were never removed from the printer. Mostly no problems

I have no idea how the chemistry of the old inks would react with the new inks. I've heard about people refilling with a different ink and having it clump. I don't think it's a good idea to change inks and not use new cartridges. The new carts don't seem to be dripping, but the volume in them is going down a lot more just from some test printings and 2 cleaning cycles than I would have expected it to.

The color gamut with a 1400 with pigment has always been fine for me using profiles. The 4-color Durabrite printers, both with OEM and refill inks were terrible. I don't expect a bright cyan like on the screen, but the 1400 can still do a nice range of bright blue and turquoise shades I could never get out of the Workforce 1100. A few ink suppliers I talked to said they could probably force it to print better with a RIP or even custom profiles, but none of them actually owned one.

I haven't used the 1100 in 4 years, it's probably clogged solid by now. I just want to get this 1400 working. Then I get to work on the dyebased one that's clogged hard despite being used more.
 

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those cartridges blocked together mostly likely belong to a CISS system , for which you can't take out individual cartridges for reset but you need an alternate reset mode with the carts in place, this is mostly done with a switch
disconnecting the cartridges instead. But the reset would only happen on that chip which did report the empty condition before, a general reset of all chips regardless of their ink status is not possible.
Ink compatibilities of the type you refer to are actually very very rare, there is currently a case with a particular Canon yellow. I'm doing refill on various Epson printers with volume since a long time and would consider that as a very remote
problem only. Let's focus onto the cartridge problems with the new cartridge set. It is impossible to get clear with the cyan issues on other printers unless we would look to the gamut of a custom profile or specific test prints with color ramps from saturated to non-saturated colors.
I would assume that the cartridges pictured above are using auto-reset chips, you remove the cartridge once it reports empty or 'not recognized' and resets with refilling and placing the carts back into the printhead carrier.
Can you run a nozzle check with these cartridges and post it here ?
 

Fenrir Enterprises

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I can't find the power cord for my good scanner and the one I used to make the PDF above is, clearly, not very good! The nozzle check isn't great. I'm still getting ink splotches but less now. I'm still hoping that's just from having no carts in for too long, I'm gonna try cleaning the underside of the printhead tonight.

I'm still worried about the ink levels falling fast though. I've already had 3 separate instances where there was a bad cart that would just drain into the waste tank overnight, replacing the cart fixed it. This time several carts seem to be dropping rapidly, though not as fast as that time.
 

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Well, I thought I was actually getting somewhere for once, had less banding and better (not perfect) nozzle tests. Then I printed again and got this. It looks to me like one of the cyan tanks is bad and I don't even know which one. Since I ordered last July I can't just go and ask for a replacement set now.

I think I give up.
 

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  • epson 1400 leak 2.pdf
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Ink stained Fingers

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If it is that bad you better throw those cartridges away and get another set.
 
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