Printhead cleaner or distilled water

[ppdoc]

I have a Brother MFC J435W printer and I only wish to use it for black and white printing. Consequently, I have no need for
any colored inks. I also have some see-thru refillable cartridges so I wonder if I could fill these with either distilled water or
printhead cleaner and substitute these for the colored cartridges. As this device uses the colored inks for printhead cleaning,
the ink absorber box would not get filled up as fast and therefore require less service.
I would really appreciate any input on this.

 

[The Hat]

I have a Brother MFC J435W printer and I only wish to use it for black and white printing. Consequently, I have no need for
any colored inks. I also have some see-thru refillable cartridges so I wonder if I could fill these with either distilled water or
printhead cleaner and substitute these for the colored cartridges. As this device uses the colored inks for printhead cleaning,
the ink absorber box would not get filled up as fast and therefore require less service.
I would really appreciate any input on this.

You have got it the wrong way round, if you fill your colour carts with cleaner, water etc
your waste pads will fill faster than they would while using ink.

You have two choices you either continue to have your coloured cartridges in place as they are now,
but as you say they will eventfully have to be replaced when they become empty, just to protect the print head. (A very long time)

The other way is just to ignore the colour cartridges altogether and disable the ink monitoring on them when they empty,
but that will result in you never having the option to print in colour again.

You could however get a mono laser printer for all your black and white printing
and save your colour printer from any damage; this would be a cheaper option for you..

 

[Grandad35]

You have got it the wrong way round, if you fill your colour carts with cleaner, water etc
your waste pads will fill faster than they would while using ink.

True, but distilled water will evaporate without leaving a residue and won't actually fill the pads. You will have to reset the ink counter and guess at how many times it can be reset before overflowing actual ink.

Also remember that ink is more viscous and has a lower surface tension than water.

 

[ppdoc]

Thanks for your input. I have just one more question and that is what does the viscosity or the surface tension of a liquid have to do with how the printhead functions?

 

[Grandad35]

Surface tension is the physical mechanism that controls how ink is pulled from the cart and delivered to the print head, and is also involved in the ink droplet formation. I'm not sure how viscosity is involved in the function of the print head other than it affects how much pressure is required to get the ink to flow.

 

[turbguy]

Hello .everybody.
i am a printer repair engineer.i want sharing my experience.
please advise.

Hello! What OEM and technology (inkjet/laser/other) printers do you repair?

Wayne

 

[ghwellsjr]

True, but distilled water will evaporate without leaving a residue and won't actually fill the pads. You will have to reset the ink counter and guess at how many times it can be reset before overflowing actual ink.

I have never used distilled water but I have used Windex to clean the two pads where the head parks and I can say that with my Canon printers, there is practically no evaporation of any liquid from the waste ink pads as they are almost completely surrounded by plastic. In fact, ink was overflowing and leaking out the bottom of my main printer before it warned me that the waste ink was full.