Need printing solution for elementary school

[twinkle]

Long time canon and epson refiller, but for personal use only. Looking for a hassle-free solution for elementary school. Currently using Epson R280 with CISS, but nozzles often get blocked or catch an air bubble or whatever, dribbles a bit of ink sometimes, needs bottles moved up/down to keep ink primed... not ideal.

Only one person has access to this printer, so doesn't need to be idiot-proof, as all colour printing is emailed to her. However, it needs to be reasonably reliable. Volume is only about 100 pages/day, but they tend to have a lot of ink coverage.

What I would love to find is:

- foolproof CISS system that only requires filling bottles (hah!)
- or printer with very large cartridges that only requires refilling so often
- or printer with small cartridges that allow you to reset all to full in one shot. That is, when one cart empties, I would like the user to replace all of them with a set of full carts, would like the printer to think that they are all full, would like to top off the removed set of partially empty carts and to have printer recognize those next time as being full. Definitely don't want to change cart at a time as each gets empty, that is not usable.

Budget could be a few hundred for something that works. Something like http://www.staples.com/HP-Officejet-Pro-X476dn-All-in-One-Printer/product_135376 with refillable carts or 3rd party carts would seem ideal and within budget.

Suggestion much appreciated.

 

[The Hat]

I could recommend a pro 9000 to do the job for you no problems, with an extra set or two of cartridges,
it would work just as efficient as any CISS system would and you can also change out all the cartridges together.

Theres good ink and a resetter available for it and you couldnt get a more reliable printer either,
and when youre ready you can refill the OEM cartridge real easy in your own time.

If you want something more expensive then the Pro 1 will also work well for you,
it comes with much bigger cartridges and pigment inks (Which dont clog) and it also has a built in CISS..

 

[mikling]

Are you using truly Epson compatible ink with your CISS or a universal ink that can also be used with Canons? That is the likely source of your woes.

 

[cls]

I installed several Xerox ColorQube 8870 or the older modell Xerox Phaser 8860 on multiple Schools and Legal Offices.
These are "Solid Ink" based printers, its colored Wax. It gives superb printing speed and versatile papers usage since you can print on 100% greyish recycling papers aswell.
Since there is no really cheaper solution than sticking to OEM Inks the cost per Page for a ISO/IEC 24712 document is like 3,6 -Cent or 4.7 US$-Cent

Other easy to use printer with a superb solution with refillalbe cartriges is the Epson Business B-510DN Inkjet printer. There are alot of refillable cartiges out there: Auto reseting ones and others are with manual reset.
The cartiges usually hold 300ml but the chip will deplete at 220ml these are easily refillable with a funnel pouring directly into them.

Its 4 color pigment based, the speed is superb


Other than that I would probably go for Epson WorkForce Pro Series I own a WF-4545 DTWF prints fast on "normal" settings and its a good workhorse but not really the UBER fast high setting printer.

I got some queistion

How much is the estimated monthly page print output?
Any requirements into Networking?
How many Clients / machines will be printing on the device
How much is the estimated Page covereage of ink? (typical office documents, colorfull office document, etc pp)

kind regards

 

[twinkle]

@milkling: I started with inkjetcarts.us ciss and inks (which are supposedly IS inks), and now I'm using inks I bought from you.

The main problem is that every day some nozzles will skip, and it comes and goes, and it is a hassle to work around it, especially since user printing is likely to send a 50 page batch and not look at it until it is done. It is too much hassle if you are not a printing geek.

Lines are full of ink, and the little "bubble" in the cart is primed as well as I could make it. But it still works nothing like my home R280 with refillable carts, which is bombproof.

 

[mikling]

If such is the case, I would suspect that the priming suction cup has a problem. That is a printer problem. Try cleaning the underside of the printhead to make sure that there is not something lodged there that will prevent the sealing of the rubber frame against the underside that will create an air leak during priming.. Other than that, it falls back to a hardware issue somewhere because even with low cost CISSes, the system should be very reliable once the correct ink consistency is there. These printers are literal workhorses but the occasional horse can sometimes come up lame. There is also the possibility as well that the ink system has developed a problem and don't count that out.

 

[twinkle]

I installed several Xerox ColorQube 8870 or the older modell Xerox Phaser 8860 on multiple Schools and Legal Offices.
These are "Solid Ink" based printers, its colored Wax. It gives superb printing speed and versatile papers usage since you can print on 100% greyish recycling papers aswell.
Since there is no really cheaper solution than sticking to OEM Inks the cost per Page for a ISO/IEC 24712 document is like 3,6 -Cent or 4.7 US$-Cent

We have a Xerox Phaser 8560 and even with ebay inks we were spending about $200/month on ink. With inkjet inks it is more like $15/month.

Other easy to use printer with a superb solution with refillalbe cartriges is the Epson Business B-510DN Inkjet printer. There are alot of refillable cartiges out there: Auto reseting ones and others are with manual reset.
The cartiges usually hold 300ml but the chip will deplete at 220ml these are easily refillable with a funnel pouring directly into them.

Its 4 color pigment based, the speed is superb


Other than that I would probably go for Epson WorkForce Pro Series I own a WF-4545 DTWF prints fast on "normal" settings and its a good workhorse but not really the UBER fast high setting printer.

I got some queistion

How much is the estimated monthly page print output?
Any requirements into Networking?
How many Clients / machines will be printing on the device
How much is the estimated Page covereage of ink? (typical office documents, colorfull office document, etc pp)

kind regards

My guess is 1000 pages/month
Networking not needed
1 client
50% coverage (kids artwork, photos, etc - not business documents, for that we use a laser and cost is OK at low coverage)

I do not think that we can do what we want (print a lot of colour, not necessarily of high quality and not worry about cost) without 3rd party inkjet solution.

 

[cls]

send you a pm