Need to buy a new printer - what is best for refilling?

[mikeybro1]

I have an HP Deskjet 5500. I have put this thing though the works. I design a lot of business cards, brochures, letterhead, pictures, you name it. I've had it for about 5 years and it's been awesome. Just in the last few days it has started giving me a lot of mechanism errors, that take a lot of messing around (and patience) to get working again. It does seem that my printer is on its last legs.

I have been refilling the cartridges in this printer for about 2 years now. It's certainly not perfect...and sometimes I end up buying a new cartridge altogether as the print quality is gone. But I'm used to refilling them...and used to fiddling with them to get them printing properly.

But now, it looks as though I may have to replace it soon, so I've been on the lookout. I'd heard that Canon's didn't have chips, so they're easier to refill...but I see now that the new ones DO have chips too. So does anyone have any recommendations for someone buying a printer today (well soon)? Refilling the cartridges with ease is important, and having something that gives good picture quality (photos) and can handly heavy paper (business cards)...

I was looking at the Canon Pixma IP6600 as I liked the duplex function and some other things. But I'm wondering now if I should be scouring for an old Canon without the chips...and if so, which one is good?

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[fish]

I am unable to find a Pixma 5000 (unchipped) in Honolulu but did run across same generation 6000 on sale at CompUSA. I do a lot of text printing and the 6000 may not be suitable for me, but may purchase the 6000 before it disappears.

If you want a photo printer, this is one to consider.

 

[Osage]

To add to what fish said.

Your first decision if you want an unchipped Canon is decide if you wany a full blown
photoprinter----or something more general purpose.

First understand that the better refillable non-chipped Canons take the BCI-3&6 line of cartridges. While the chipped Canons take the CLI-5&8 line. The general purpose printers tend to be five color printers----with a large BCI-3ebk pigmented text cartridge, and four smaller BCI-6 dye based cartridges in cyan, magenta, yellow, and a photoblack. Typical examples of these would be the pixma ip4000 and ip5000.
There is a ip3000 that lacks a photoblack. I suspect these general purpose printers might be better for the cards you print.

A step up on expense gets you into the dedicated line of photoprinters that tend to be better at photoprinting but less good at text printing. The six or more color printers. You lose the large BCI-3ebk cartridge, retain cyan, magenta, yellow, and photoblack, and gain accent colors like photomagenta and photocyan. Examples might be the ip 6000, 8500, i9100, i960, and similar models with some of them widecarriage models.

Most of these Canons have been replaced by newer models that are chipped---making refilling slightly harder and preventing the use of any third party cartridges. Non-chipped Canons are getting hard to find--ebay is often the place to look.

Not only are Canons very rugged and trouble free, their chief charm is their ease of refilling. With huge saving possible. But my guess is, your first decision will be to decide if you want a dedicated photoprinter or a more general purpose one.

 

[fotofreek]

On the comp.periphs.printers newsgroup there have been several discussions about the duplex function on the pixmas. I've only tried the duplex function a few times, but from what I've read, there are two downsides. 1) SLOW! It takes time for the mechanism to flip the paper. If you are doing severaral copies it is much faster to manually duplex and forget this feature. 2) When duplex is used the printer doesn't use the bci-3ebk (pigmented) cart. If the sharp dark black text that these printers are capable of is what you want then the duplex feature is not what you want to use.

Since Mikey has been used to discarding the HP carts when the get tired, the newest chipped Canons don't present a problem for him. If he is prepared to buy a backup set of carts and occasionally do the Granddad backflush, the newest pixmas should be OK as they use the same easy refill technique as the BCI-6 and BCI-3ebk carts. Since the older carts support at least half a dozen refills before backflushing and starting over on the refill cycles, he may still be refilling the original set when some vendor comes up with aftermarket carts or a chip resetter.

 

[on30trainman]

fotofreek,
Concerning your comments about the duplex function in the Pixmas - yes it is slower than printing and manually turning due to the printer allowing a dry time before pulling the page back in, but it is nice to setup a double sided job and walk away from it and not have to worry about flipping pages. But your comment about not using the pigmented Black is curious. I do quite a bit of duplex printing with my Pixma ip4000 and when I do the pigmented black cartridge definitely seems to be being used - the level drops. My duplexed printouts are as BLACK as when I don't use duplexing. And I don't see why it wouldn't be used as long as plain paper is called for. Can you steer me to a thread (or date) on the printer newsgroup where the statement is made that pigmented black isn't being used? I would like to read up on how it was determined. Thanks,

Steve W.

 

[fotofreek]

03/23/06 Subject: Duplex printers and CD printers

03/16/06 Subject: IP4000 - which black ink used when. Follow the entire thread.

These are the latest references to this issue that I've seen. They were in the comp.periphs.printers NG. The responders, Taliesyn and Zakezuke are very knowledgeable guys.

You will notice all-caps messages from one individual interspersed between those with actual helpful content. He apparently has a problem with anyone using or mentioning aftermarket inks or carts. He also seems to enjoy trying to irritate people with his responses. Most of the participants on that newsgroup have learned to either ignore him or killfile him. This forum is much more pleasant and helpful as it is moderated. Any participant who would consider continuing with a diatribe or posting inflamatory or crude messages knows that their posts will not be tolerated.

 

[on30trainman]

Thanks for the links - I looked at those plus another one I found. I am not sure anybody has/had the true answer. I ran some tests since my earlier reply to you using both the ip4000 and ip6000D in the duplex mode. I do agree that the output of the ip4000 in duplex mode is lighter than in the regular mode. But, interestingly, the ip6000D was not as light as the ip4000 when running both in duplex mode. Both units are using Hobbicolor inks. The ip4000 was almost twice as fast as the ip6000D in the duplex mode test - ip4000 (53 sec total) and ip6000D (80 sec total) for a page printed on both sides. I will have to run the water smear test tomorrow.
There did seem to be some thought that the duplex mode in the ip4000 does use some pigment ink, but not as heavy as in the regular mode. All I remember that I ran an almost two hundred page document - mainly black text - in duplex mode and when I checked the pigmented cartridge, it was down considerably.
Yes that one jerk can make it very hard to really follow the threads. I have run into him on other unmoderated forms before. Non OEM inks are his bane. Every unmoderated forum seems to have someone like him - to various degrees. Zakezuke is reliable - he was a constant contributer in the Steve's forum on the DVD print mod to Canon pixmas. Think I may have traded some off forum emails with him.
Thanks again for the links.

Steve W.

 

[panos]

Very interesting info at the usenet, thanks fotofreek!. I just took a hardcopy of the same document in duplex and normal printing. Here is a scan:

It's obvious, I think.

 

[fotofreek]

Steve - interesting comparison between ip4000 and ip6000 on duplex mode. There must be a significant difference between these printer drivers to produce black text, based, most probably, on the fact that the ip4000 has the pigment-based black ink for text and the ip6000, with six dye-based carts, has to produce text black in a different way. Also, the extended printing time of the ip6000 probably permits ink to dry before flipping the paper. I wonder if the addition of duplex mode in "updating" the i960 to the ip6000 weighed into the decision by Canon to reduce the number of jets in the printhead, thus substantially increasing the time to produce a quality color print. Maybe this was done to permit ink to dry if the user selected duplex printing mode. Otherwise, why would a company negatively alter the printhead design as they bring a new generation of six color printers to market?

 

[fotofreek]

Panos - Kalimera. Interesting post. You can also use high magnification - like a jeweler's loupe - and see the color composition of the dots that make up the printed text. I haven't done that, but I've seen posts from someone who did. In duplex mode the printing of black text had some of the colors of carts other than black, whereas the non-duplex plain paper printed text was strictly black. There was also a difference in the gloss as pigmented ink has a slight gloss and the dye-based ink does not. Also, the dye-based ink was less water resistant than the pigmented black. Check it out.